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Thread: Western Meadowlark

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    Default Western Meadowlark

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    Taken late last month in Bosque del Apache's Crane Pools, the whole area was frozen and the Meadowlarks were the only birds around by the parking lot, I managed to get close to them and lay down in the snow for a couple of snaps. It's a simple image, but one that shows how it was there during the snow storm. I wish the feet would have shown but they were buried in the snow at all times.

    Nikon 750 - 300.0 mm f/2.8 - 2.0 TC

    ƒ/8.0
    1/1600
    ISO 500


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    Lovely image of a lovely bird. The snow seems to have a slight blue cast to it, I'd love to see the head facing slightly more toward the viewer, and the catch light in the eye looks a bit too fabricated, especially given the soft overcast(?) light.

    Best,

    Ryan

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    Nice to see one in the snow. The composition is very nice.

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    Love the colors, the soft light, and the simple image design. And the head angle is perfect for this pose. All in all this one is very well done.

    with love, artie
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    I have yet to be able to get close to one of these birds for a shot so kudos. And my kind of shot here with a nice low angle. Nice proud pose on the bird and perfect head angle. However, the image quality looks off as the bird does not look sharp at all to me. Kind of has the look of some heat shimmer. The colors on the bird are too thin as well. In addition it looks like you added canvas on the bottom of the frame but did not do a good job of blending because there are obvious lines under your signature and near the bottom right corner. Plus you can see that there is a bright white spot in the very bottom right corner where the content aware fill did not work.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Isaac Grant View Post
    I have yet to be able to get close to one of these birds for a shot so kudos. And my kind of shot here with a nice low angle. Nice proud pose on the bird and perfect head angle. However, the image quality looks off as the bird does not look sharp at all to me. Kind of has the look of some heat shimmer. The colors on the bird are too thin as well. In addition it looks like you added canvas on the bottom of the frame but did not do a good job of blending because there are obvious lines under your signature and near the bottom right corner. Plus you can see that there is a bright white spot in the very bottom right corner where the content aware fill did not work.
    Thanks for pointing that out, I did add just a little bit of canvas below and I rushed through the process, I will go back and clean it up. The details had look good in my monitor, not pin sharp but good enough to my eyes, what do you mean about colors look thin? should I add more punch to it?

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    I have also added canvas and made the exact same mistake before. Don't sweat it. What I mean by thin is that the bird looks somewhat opaque and does not have enough tone and depth. The yellows are not deep enough and the browns and blacks look washed out. This bird should really stand out from the snow but almost appears to have a haze over it to me. It should look more 3 dimensional with deeper browns and blacks and whiter whites. Did a quick rework where I did a curves adjustment by using the black point dropper, added some blacks to the bird in selective color and adjusted levels a bit as well. I also took away some of the blacks in the whites with selective color and ran some detail extractor on the snow to bring out some extra details. Please note that all of this is best done on the original TIFF and not the downsized jpeg. And best done on a razor sharp file. Only doing this as a way to show how the bird should stand out a bit more against the snow but I do not think the image quality has held up well on my repost. My version is on the bottom.

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    Great! thanks for taking your time to demostrate it, I will get back to it in PS and work on it, love how the snow really stands out.

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    Some stuff.

    #1- the two versions look virtually identical to me.
    #2- from where I sit there was no need to add canvas below and yes, it was a sloppy job. I would actually have cropped from above and below to 3X2 ...
    #3- "Too thin" and "opaque" seem to be opposites to me :)

    with love, a
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    They sure are opposite! Should have said transparent. And the two versions look noticeably different on my monitor. Weird.

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    Isaac, All good and thanks for doing the repost.

    with love, artie
    BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.

    BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.

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