Orange Minivet

[Aditya Sridhar]

It's always a nice feeling to dig through old archives and reprocess some photos. This image of an Orange Minivet was shot during my trip to India in the winter of 2017. I was actually shooting black kites and sunbirds when this beauty popped up on a nearby tree. It's quite difficult to manage the Orange on the breast as it tends to get blown out very easily. In my processing, I toned it down and opted to be more conservative with the saturation than go OTT with the colors.

Camera - Nikon D850
Focal Length - 420mm
Aperture - f/5.6
Shutter Speed - 1/1600s
ISO - 1100
Handheld
Manual

The bird wasn't baited or attracted by call playback. Thanks for viewing and, as always, comments and critiques are appreciated

Adi

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Colors look really nice. When I was watching this image in my Mobile, I thought of a different composition which involved taking some canvas at the top.
I am not quite sure when I saw this image in the monitor.
I love the leaves (Coconut Leaves), and can relate to them a lot.

I would sharpen the bird a little bit more.

TFS

[John Mack]

Neat looking little bird. Like the diaganol lines that the leaves of the perch makes. Yes to another round of sharpening.

[gail bisson]

I love the bird and the grey complimentary BG but the palm fronds are a bit overwhelming. They really pull my eye away from this colorful bird.
I would change the crop to a landscape orientation and decrease the amount of leaves at the bottom.
But, oh, what a beautiful bird!
Gail

[Daniel Cadieux]

Gorgeous bird indeed! I'm gonna go opposite of Gail this time (which is rare!) - I would have pointed the lens down to place the subject higher (and a bit closer to the left edge too) and add more leaves below. I love those flaming oranges, very nice.

[Aditya Sridhar]

Thanks all for the feedback! I've attached a couple of different versions based on Gail's and Daniel's suggestions. I've also sharpened them more compared to the original post as suggested by Krishna and John. I think this is a difficult image to balance in terms of deciding whether to keep the leaves or not. On one hand, they have some character but I see how they may be distracting for some.

[Moe Richard]

I think I like the first crop the best as the perch is less noticeable. I might crop the first image a little tighter but not much. Fascinating bird with good color, detail.

[gail bisson]

Love the first one but gotta to say that Daniel's idea is growing on me.