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Lewin's Honeyeater
Taken down the south coast of New South Wales a few hours drive from my home in land-locked Canberra. There were lots of birds (mainly silvereyes and some of these honeyeaters) feasting on ripening berries in the vegetation just behind the beach. The Lewin's Honeyeater is a fairly lively and aggressive honeyeater. This one took a brief moment on an open perch to survey the scene before diving in to a nearby bush to gorge on more berries. Note the characteristic blue-grey eye of this species. That pale patch behind the eye is always a difficult one to expose and easily blows. Just managed to recover this one as the original capture was a bit over-exposed. Crop is maybe half the frame area.
Hope you enjoy and as always, welcome any comments and views you are kind enough to share.
Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Mk II at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/1600 sec, f7.1, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 2.5, crop, lighting adjustments, reduced luminance NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur, 0.3 or 0.4 pixels at 50% - can't remember exactly as I processed a while ago) after final size reduction.
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Lifetime Member
Very nice Glenn.
I like the perfect head angle and great IQ of the bird.
Thanks for your informative text.
BG is nice and the clean BG to the left of bird helps to minimize the more cluttered area on the right.
The strip of green on the bottom adds a lovely pop of color.
Good one!
gail
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Hi Glenn...I agree with Gail...very nice composition, clarity and detail. (can't seem to scroll on my laptop, so bird cut off on the right side...only seems to happen with some posts)
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What a great lookin bird Glenn, love the eye, details galore and pose id perfect. Very nice frame.
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The bird looks great Glenn. Details and colors are excellent. I like the background but I do not like the perch. I find it too busy and cluttered. Also I think you reduced the exposure a little too much as I find the image a little dark. What I have been realizing more and more lately is just how important the right perch is to a shot. Bird on a stick is nice, but bird on a beautiful perch really makes all the difference in a shot. It also makes it way harder to find the opportunity to have a bird on a great perch with a perfect background. Have to put in tons of work for each species to find just the right opportunity.
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Thank you Gail, Paul, Ann and Isaac. I appreciate your efforts in commenting. To some specifics Isaac raises...
Originally Posted by
Isaac Grant
The bird looks great Glenn. Details and colors are excellent. I like the background but I do not like the perch. I find it too busy and cluttered. Also I think you reduced the exposure a little too much as I find the image a little dark. What I have been realizing more and more lately is just how important the right perch is to a shot. Bird on a stick is nice, but bird on a beautiful perch really makes all the difference in a shot. It also makes it way harder to find the opportunity to have a bird on a great perch with a perfect background. Have to put in tons of work for each species to find just the right opportunity.
Your comment on exposure/brightness is useful, Isaac as I am often in two minds where to take a shot on that. I'd very much appreciate other views on that as I was happy with this one when I did it but you raise doubts in my mind, particularly on looking at it afresh.
As for perches and backgrounds, agreed that showing off a bird well requires a good combination of those two and that can be very hard to achieve at times. To raise the bar even further, I think perch and background not only need to look good but reflect the bird and where it lives or feeds. Sometimes a lot of creativity in framing a shot and finding an opportunity is needed to achieve a pleasing result and adds to the fun and challenge. For this shot, I didn't mind the cluttered perch as the bird is facing away from it with a relatively clean background behind. But is it perfect: I'm sure not!
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I like the bird and the details, perch and light angle aren't ideal which are holding this one back
TFS
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Nice capture Glenn . I do wish the background colors were better. Looks like it is over sharpened,especially on the breast. Maybe is just feather detail which seems large. I love the color in the eye.
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A nice image Glenn, with super detail and good HA. The BG is what it is and not a deal breaker.
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Thank you Arash, Kevin and Sanjeev. Feedback always appreciated and informative.
Originally Posted by
kevin Hice
Nice capture Glenn . I do wish the background colors were better. Looks like it is over sharpened,especially on the breast. Maybe is just feather detail which seems large. I love the color in the eye.
Kevin, the over-sharpened look is a result of the strong light and reflects how these birds look under that type of directional light. These are not big birds so the feather filaments will be obvious in a well-focussed photo.
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Lifetime Member
Love the details, really well done indeed.
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Hi Glenn, beautiful bird, lovely color and feather detail. Nice background compliments the bird. As mentioned perch is less that ideal but all of us who photograph birds have been there so many times. Thank you for sharing.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
www.amazinglight.smugmug.com
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Lifetime Member
A lovely capture Glenn, I just wish you'd have been able to stand a little further to your right to help with both the sun angle and possibly get a cleaner frame.
Excellent details, good shooting angle
Mike
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Thank you Bret, Joe and Mike for your thoughtful comments.
Originally Posted by
Mike Poole
A lovely capture Glenn, I just wish you'd have been able to stand a little further to your right to help with both the sun angle and possibly get a cleaner frame.
Excellent details, good shooting angle
Mike
Mike, in this instance, the bird was very skittish and I am confident would have flown if I'd budged from my position. So I took what I could get. As mentioned earlier, I was actually comfortable with the relatively messy perch here given the bird is facing into a clear area of the frame (relatively anyway).
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