Firstly the bad news: my old car died.
Now the good news...bought a new car (well 5 yrs old)
Bad news: can't pick up the car until Tuesday or Wednesday
So...what does one do without a car meanwhile? Edit photos!
Bad news: Any new photographic gear is on hold for a while That's life!
Here's a female Variegated fair-wren taken recently'
7Dii, 100-400@400mm, 1/60th sec, f5.6, iso500 AV mode hand-held. Cheers.
Hi Paul,
Sorry to hear about the car and even more sorry about not getting new photographic gear.
These are such sweet little birds. I love the direct gaze and the rust colored mask around the eye.
The blue perky tail looks nice cocked at an angle like this.
I would smooth out the edges of the OOF branches in the BG.
Do you have a bit more room at the bottom to include the entire leaf?
And finally, I might prune the leaf tip near the edge of the foot.
Some of the whites on the breast are a bit hot and I think you could recover some detail there by selecting the areas, feathering the selection by 10 pixels or so and try decreasing the brightness and or exposure. If you know how to use luminosity masks that would be another option,
Gail
Hi Paul, Think of all the birds that new car will drive you to... I love the fairy wrens and this is another sweet one. I like the head on stare and would also take care of the hot spots along with selectively reducing the slight noise on the lower abdomen. Yes to cleaning up the bottom and good idea to look at it as a vertical as Dan mentioned. TFS
I like the suggestions you've received to improve this image of a beautiful species. I'd also add to not be afraid to raise the ISO to give you additional shutter speed - my 7DII lives on ISOs 800 & 1600 lately it seems. All the best with the new vehicle!
Focus on face/eyes is perfect and makes for a really engaging frame. Agree 100% on the vertical crop; as is he's really lost in the landscape orientation. Also agree about trying to recover some
of the white around the chin.
Thank you all for the constructive feedback. I've re-edited the raw file and applied the suggestions given, including luminosity mask to reduce hot whites, some softening of the background, some cloning on the bottom left and selective noise reduction. Hope you like it. Cheers.
Vertical crop is much better, and it looks like you have dealt with the highlights well. Given you have done so much, the remaining leaf now looks like it needs to go too... Personally I prefer small birds to be looser in the frame so as not to be too magnified on a big screen, but others will appreciate the detail you have.