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Thread: Cedar Waxwing in Bald Cypress

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    Default Cedar Waxwing in Bald Cypress

    I typically hear these long before I can see them as they tend to stay higher up in the trees. A pair were capturing bugs for a nest they must have in my large cedar tree (appropriate, right?) and I was lucky enough that this one came down low enough in my neighbors tree so I could at least catch MOST of the bird! He was actually hanging upside down in a number of shots and this one had the least amount of foliage. I set up a mealworm feeder and a perch hoping that they might visit for a clean shot but so far they like the safety of the trees much better! I went for a square crop and painted in some bright areas of the BG with the brush, a little NR on the BG and used the clone tool to fix what looked to be a wound from the beak back past his eye.

    Canon 7D Mark II, Tamron 150-600mm, 400mm, ISO 1250, 1/500, f/8.0, HH, AF, sunny afternoon but in the shadows of the foliage of the large tree.

    Name:  Cedar-Waxwing-Mason-5242016.jpg
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    Name:  Cedar-Waxwing-crop.jpg
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    Very nice! At least we can see the tip of the tail. Good subtle detail on the fine feathers. These birds can look like ceramic decorations in some pictures!

    I think you could leave a little more of the canvas on the left. Maybe darken subtly there with a gradient to balance the darker right side a little.

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    BPN Member Jim Keener's Avatar
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    I knew when I saw your name that this would be a beautiful bird. And as Diane wrote, the detail on those fine feathers is helps make this a worthy image. What do you think of a bit lighter exposure?

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    Warren: another lovely one from you. Agree with Jim and Diane as I might want to see a lighter exposure and a bit more room left just to compare. But I really have no issues with the square crop, but that's me and my likes (almost all mine seem to be centered, so I have to make a conscious effort to "focus and re-compose"). Boy, the feathers just look silky smooth in this pic, don't they?

    Keep 'em coming!! Glennie's not here so we have to fill in posts of pics for her in her absence .....


    AP

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    Thanks for the comments! Diane, you described how these birds look perfectly, like little porcelain keepsakes. Today on my walk I saw about 20 of them going crazy in the trees but way up in the top of the trees so no chance for another shot. Thanks Jim and Andrew, here is another crop, a bit lighter and I applied a gradient as Diane suggested to even out the BG hopefully. I decided to bring in more on the RS also to include the end of the limb. Just seemed unfinished to me without it.

    Name:  Cedar-Waxwing-Mason-wide-crop-5242016.jpg
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    Yes! I really like the addition of more BG. I wonder about bringing out a little more tonal detail on the face.

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    Beautiful bird, Warren. I think I have seen this bird on one of my mom's old coffee mug but don't count on my memory. Upside down shot might be quite interesting if you have a nice head turn there, too. That said, there is something strange to the color of the BG. Is it a slight magenta cast?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Adhika Lie View Post
    Beautiful bird, Warren. I think I have seen this bird on one of my mom's old coffee mug but don't count on my memory. Upside down shot might be quite interesting if you have a nice head turn there, too. That said, there is something strange to the color of the BG. Is it a slight magenta cast?
    Thanks Adhika! Interesting, I kind of see that magenta cast in the BG on this post as well which is strange as it is not there at all on my screen in PS. I went ahead and ran it through selective color and removed any Magenta if it was indeed there, let's see how this looks now.

    Name:  Cedar-Waxwing-Mason-wide-crop-5242016.jpg
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    I don't see a difference, I guess it is coming through somewhat on the OOF branches.

    Let's try this, I went back into Selective Color and chose CYAN and removed that as well as Magenta in the CYAN. Thoughts?

    Name:  Cedar-Waxwing-Mason-wide-crop no cyan-5242016.jpg
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    Last edited by Warren Spreng; 05-26-2016 at 03:32 PM.

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    I don't see a magenta cast or anything I would cal strange colors, but that could just be me. I would suspect your browsers. I use Firefox. Internet Explorer has been blamed for a reddish hue; haven't heard about their new one in Win 10. A recent post somewhere by Michael Gerald-Yamasaki said different browsers were all over the place, even withing the bounds of being properly color managed.

    Does it look different with different browsers?

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    Hm, yeah, the magenta cast is worse on IE (I am browsing on Chrome now), not that it's completely gone. This is frustrating especially because web is the way that most common way of sharing pictures these days. It's weird, I looked at other photos and did see those differences.

    Having said that, I like the repost with cyan/magenta removed. For some reasons, the color looks better to me. Maybe it's just me, though. I subscribe to the theory that we experience color differently.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Adhika Lie View Post
    Hm, yeah, the magenta cast is worse on IE (I am browsing on Chrome now), not that it's completely gone. This is frustrating especially because web is the way that most common way of sharing pictures these days. It's weird, I looked at other photos and did see those differences.

    Having said that, I like the repost with cyan/magenta removed. For some reasons, the color looks better to me. Maybe it's just me, though. I subscribe to the theory that we experience color differently.
    I agree, I think removing the Cyan/Magenta at least made the post look better. I'm on a MAC in Safari, and I would not be surprised if different Browsers handle colors differently Diane. With Astrophotography posting on the web can totally change the look of an image from what they look like in the processing program. Artifacts show up a lot more of course in a down sampled post than what you see on the full sized TIF.

    Thanks for all the comments, it is always good to hear the different perspectives. I have to laugh as one guy on our Astrophotography website is color blind and he admits that he can't tell if the colors are good or not, he likes the B&W images!

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    Just had a quick look at a couple of reasonably colorful images with Firefox, Safari and Chrome. All look the same to me (wide-gamut monitor). Next time I find one posted without the profile tagged I'll try to remember to look at it with Safari and Chrome for comparison to FF. I have FF set to assume an untagged image is sRGB, which it often is. The big issue would be how Safari and Chrome handle it. A couple of years ago they would display it in the monitor's gamut, which made colors garish on a wide-gamut monitor.

    I don't keep up with how things are now -- more interesting things to do!

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