Eastern KingBird

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi All,

I shot this bird in anahuac national wildlife refuge last week. I saw pair of eastern KingBirds perched on fencing. I gently rolled my car near by and got out and kept shooting them taking 1 step at a time getting close to them. I would have loved to get close to them a bit more.

Though it was shot mid day as it was overcast with intermittent showers I kept shooting and was rewarded with this nice shot.

I took nearly 20-30 shots, this one I really like.


Nikon d7100, 300mm f/4 with 1.4x TC
ISO 640
1/2000 sec
f/5.6

Post processing:-

Lightroom:-

• Cropping (Minimal)
• Exposure +0.4
• Shadows +34
• Whites +25
• Blacks -7
• Noise Reduction
• Sharpening

Photoshop Elements:-

• Clone couple of foreground branches
• Brightness/Constrast Mask
  
  • Brightness +9
  • Contrast +13
  
  
• Adjusted Levels

Do let me know your comments on the same.

Thanks
Krishna

[Adhika Lie]

Very nice shot of the bird, Krishna! That green background is absolutely stunning. That soft light is indeed magical; overcast days are the best days. I don't know if you have a vertical shot of this or maybe a square crop, I think I could use less of those branches on the left.

[Glennie Passier]

Krishna, There is a lot to like about this image. The soft green BG, cute little bird giving you a great pose. Your techs look good to me. Black and white birds are very hard to get right (at least for me!) and you have done a good job. There could be just a tiny blue cast on the head?

I see in your PP in lightroom you do NR and sharpening. I used to do that once, but now all NR are done in PS. Maybe a NR layer on the BG only and sharpening on the bird only before posting.

Well done, Krisha!

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Very nice shot of the bird, Krishna! That green background is absolutely stunning. That soft light is indeed magical; overcast days are the best days. I don't know if you have a vertical shot of this or maybe a square crop, I think I could use less of those branches on the left.

Adhika, Almost all shots which I took were in landscape mode. I wanted to include some part of the environment like the leaves etc, as I could not get too close to the subject.

I will try vertical cropping, see if it looks good.

Thank you for the comments.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Krishna, There is a lot to like about this image. The soft green BG, cute little bird giving you a great pose. Your techs look good to me. Black and white birds are very hard to get right (at least for me!) and you have done a good job. There could be just a tiny blue cast on the head?

I see in your PP in lightroom you do NR and sharpening. I used to do that once, but now all NR are done in PS. Maybe a NR layer on the BG only and sharpening on the bird only before posting.

Well done, Krisha!

Glennie, Initially I used to do all my post processing in Photoshop elements (which people suggested me for beginners), recently I got adobe Lightroom which I love.

Can you let me know the advantages of applying noise reduction in Photoshop vs in Lightroom. I am currently using Photoshop elements which has limited options.

I wanted to understand more on your comment about "tiny blue cast on the head" can you help identify the same. I just could not see it... :-(

Thanks
Krishna

[Glennie Passier]

Krishna, I am still learning all this stuff myself, so when I comment on an image I am also praying that I didn't just shoot myself in the foot.

I believe LR to be similar to what I use; ACR. I use ACR always to see what tonalities I can get, or to try to fix blown highlights etc...and to fix casts. Magenta is the cast I always seem to manage to find!

I find if I need to selectively apply NR or sharpening, I will always take the image into PS. I stand to be corrected here. But I am never really confident about using the adjustment brush in ACR to do the selections.
As far as the blue cast on the head; I am not familiar with the birds colouring, so perhaps I am incorrect. Sometimes, especially with B&W white birds I will use the eyedropper tool in ACR or move the temp or tint sliders a tiny bit to see if it corrects the colour...if you think there is a correction to be needed.

[Diane Miller]

I'm late again... Very nice catch -- your patience was rewarded with a nice shot of the bird in a nice environment with a lovely BG.

Good points above. The head does look a bit blue/cyan compared to the darker area on the tail. But tonalities and color otherwise looks very good. I used a Curve and went to the Blue channel and brought the LL corner in (right) a little to remove the blue cast in the darks. That made the yellows a bit strong so I did a Sue-Sat adj layer and reduced sat of yellow just a little. Quick and dirty but you can see the idea. (I hope!) That level of color correction can get a little complex. Would be best to go back to the raw and click the eyedropper on that head area to see how things look with it neutralized. That's much better than trying to fix it in PS.

My inclination would be to crop out some of the empty space on the right and clone out the two branches right at the top edge above the bird's head. That crop places the bird in the position of thirds -- not always a requirement but it works well here as it is balanced by the mass on the left.

Sharpening is just the introduction of artifacts and I avoid it except for the default small amount in LR/ACR which makes up for softening from the anti-alias filter over the sensor. If a shot isn't sharp at 100% as it comes into the raw converter, there isn't much you can do. It may look better, but the edge artifacts will be a problem when you resize to make a JPEG or to print.

NR in LR/ACR also has its limits. (And also in other raw converters.) For me, the best and easiest way for 95% of my images is to use the Google/Nik Dfine plugin for PS, which should work in Elements too. It is quite amazing even in the default one-click mode. The Nik suite is now free and installs easily. I use some parts of it on almost all my images.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi Diane,

Thank you for the feedback. I cross checked the image in Lightroom, went to color and reduced the blue channel, I saw what you guys mean by blue/cyan cast.

Thank you for the details.

Do you have specific links or can you point me to specific videos which I can watch to learn Google/Nick Dfine. I recently downloaded it but never used it.

Thanks
Krishna

[Diane Miller]

I'd look for videos on their site -- there must be some.... I find them so intuitive I'm not sure I've ever looked for a video or other tutorial.

When you say "went to color and reduced the blue channel" can you be more specific? Do you mean the WB sliders? If so, yes, that's where I'd start.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi Diane,

Thanks for the info. I searched Youtube and saw some generic videos on Noise reduction using Nik Dfine software. I will start using it in my post processing. It was amazing to see noise reduction applied only to certain parts of the image based on points or based on color.

went to color and reduced the blue channel

What I meant was that in Lightroom6

I selected 3 panel (HSL/Color/B & W).

I clicked on Color and reduced Saturation for Blues.

Thanks
Krishna

[Diane Miller]

OK -- that will work. I misfired a synapse somewhere.... I'll usually look at WB first, though, but it often isn't enough. HSL also offers a lot of control for some situations in allowing a slight hue change for specific colors.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Thank you for all the feedback