This is a mountain bluebird, taken with a Canon Xti, 400 mm f5.6 lens
ISO 200
f5.6
1/125
The background was blurred a bit to reduce noise. No alteration was made in color saturation. I know the colors look unreal but so do the birds.
Some sharpening applied to his eyes and head.
Thanks for loooking.
HI Dave It does look unreal !!! I would back down the saturation in the blue channel just a bit !!
I like the pose and clean bg Great head angle One good point in this image is the light angle Take a look at the perch... lot of light on the right left side but not much to the right Same way there is a shadow ....same on the bird !!! You can try fill flash or obtaining a good sun angle !!!
I had a few of these birds in my backyard this spring so I can attest that this IS what they look like. It actually freaked me out a bit at first! You could back down on the blue a tad but since this is their color, I'd be tempted to leave it as is.
Great head angle, nice overall lighting and clean BG. Good work, Dave!
Thanks for the comments. The first time I saw one of these birds I was so astounded by the color that I still remember the place and time even though it was decades ago - 1979, second week of June, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone (I dont keep lists and can't remember being so struck by any other bird. I was tempted to decrease the saturation due to previous comments about how unreal it looked but decided to keep it as is for a faithful recording of the bird. I am certainly going to have to learn about fill flash.
mountain bluebird
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