Theme: Going to Eat You!

[Erik Dahl]

Hi new here (and fairly new to photography) but found this Strait Down the Barrel shot of a Yellow-rumped that I like a lot. We were in Prime Hook, DE this spring and he was eating little bugs staying within a radius of 100' for around 20 minutes. I got a bunch of pretty good ones of him eating... really fun.



7D, EF 500 mm f/4 L IS II USM + 1.4x, f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 1000, aperture priority, tripod

-EAD

[Glennie Passier]

Welcome Erik! This is certainly a cute little bird and her certainly fits the theme well.

I am new to "Avian", so take anything I say with a grain of salt!

You haven't mentioned if there is any PP work done on the image, and what sort. This helps to give a critique. I am not familiar with the bird so unable to comment on his colouring, but I feel the yellow on his wings may have lost a bit of detail. If this image were mine, I would consider removing the two twigs in the middle, if this sits OK with your ethics. The foliage doesn't worry me a great deal, but wish I could see all of the leaf buds and leaf.

You mentioned the bird was eating little bugs and the brown spot could very well be an OOF bug. But as is, it looks like a brown spot that could be removed. If the bug was more in focus it would be great.

I really love the beautiful green BG. It compliments the bird and the leaves.

This is a very good first post!

Hope to see more.

[Bill Dix]

Welcome Erik. A nice head-on shot of this Yellow-rump. Good critique above from Glennie. Toning down the yellows might pull a bit more detail. And without your description I wouldn't have known the oof spot was his dinner.

[David Salem]

Welcome to BPN Eric. Glennie gave you a good critique of some the issues with the frame so I would work on those items to improve the image if you are inclined to. Otherwise nice background and head on stare. The fine feather details are a bit lacking so maybe look close at the RAW and make sure it is sharp. Well done and look forward to more.

[Erik Dahl]

Welcome Erik! This is certainly a cute little bird and her certainly fits the theme well.

Thanks!

You haven't mentioned if there is any PP work done on the image, and what sort. This helps to give a critique. I am not familiar with the bird so unable to comment on his colouring, but I feel the yellow on his wings may have lost a bit of detail. If this image were mine, I would consider removing the two twigs in the middle, if this sits OK with your ethics. The foliage doesn't worry me a great deal, but wish I could see all of the leaf buds and leaf.

No Photoshop on this image... I used the following Nik tools: Dfine 2, Viveza 2 (very little here), Color Fex Pro 4 (Detail Extractor on the bird and Pro Contrast), Sharpener Pro 3. I'm pretty new to all of these tools so I'm not 100% confident with them yet. I went back to the raw image and the yellow lacks detail there too... The original image is underexposed which is a problem I've been having. I'm practicing in full manual mode now in the hope that I can do better than the camera some day. I'm also contemplating a camera upgrade although I know I'm most likely the weakest link still.

Here's the unprocessed image... any thoughts on why the yellow lacks detail?

I mentioned the bird was eating little bugs and the brown spot could very well be an OOF bug. But as is, it looks like a brown spot that could be removed. If the bug was more in focus it would be great.

It is a bug I'll try taking it out... I have a different shot with him looking down and the bug is in the same plane and in focus... I wish I had got the bug here too. I couldn't actually see the bugs while I was shooting.

This is a very good first post!

Hope to see more.

Thanks! I'll try and do a little more work (photoshop) on the image this weekend and see what I can come up with.

[Isaac Grant]

Welcome. I love the Yellow rump staring at the fly. I could tell right away what it was. I agree that I would clone out the leaves as they are distracting. As for the yellows I would tone them down with the RAW. You can also try and select just the yellows, then in PS go to IMAGE, ADJUSTMENTS, HUE/SATURATION and then in the drop down menu select the yellows and use the slider to reduce the saturation and lightness until you get more detail. Then you can and also use the NIK Detail Extractor in Color Efex Pro 4 while you still have it selected to see if you can get more details out of the yellows. This software is hard to deal with. Often lowering the opacity of the DE to 50% or even 25% will yield good results and not create too crunchy of an adjustment. Give that a try and see how it goes.

[Erik Dahl]

He seemed lonely without the leaves so I left them in but took the branch out... to the best of my photoshop skills. Also backed off the yellow and took out the bug. I definitely like the branch gone. Not sure about the bug.