Yellow-headed Blackbird

[Dorian Anderson]

Between writing and leading birding tours, I've hardly done any shooting this spring. I did, however, get away for three days of
camping with the wife this weekend, and I captured a bunch of nice frames in the Sierra Valley in Eastern California.

Nothing special here, just an early morning view of one of the continent's most striking birds. I cloned out two small stalks but
left the rest since I think the frame looks 100% natural (versus set-up) as is.

Canon 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4x III on EOS 1DX2
1/1000 at f/7.1, ISO 800
Processed in LR CC with the minor cloning caveats above

[arash_hazeghi]

looks good buddy, light was great and rendered the blacks nicely. some of the face yellows are a bit on the edge in the red channel, probably from JPEG compression and if mine I'd get rid of the twigs sticking out just above the tail. calling pose is great too

TFS

[Wayne Niz]

Great shot Dorian, that bird is signing on the top of his voice without a care in the world. Well done

[Kurt Bowman]

Great singing pose, good job on the processing. I like it as posted myself.

[dankearl]

Great subject, if it were mine I would lower the exposure a bit, blacks are too light for me and the yellows also could be brought down..

[Paul Burdett]

Dorian: A striking image. The HA is perfect...such a nice pose overall. Colours, exposure look good to me, and the gradient style smooth BG rocks! One thing that's grabbing my eye is the oof darker bits between the tail and wing feathers. Removing the twigs as Arash suggests could fix that for me.

[Dorian Anderson]

Thank you all for the kind words and suggestions! Several have suggested cloning the shaded twigs between the wing and tail.

For better or worse, there are two issues with that valid idea - 1) it's more cloning that I feel comfortable doing from an authenticity standpoint and 2) I'm not good at cloning elements which are very close to or intersect the subject!

So yeah, probably not gonna happen on those two counts.......

[Paul Burdett]

Dorian. I do agree with you regarding the authenticity aspect, but thought I'd have a go at cloning those twigs. It's fine if you don't like it, but it was just an idea. Thoughts?

[Dorian Anderson]

Dorian. I do agree with you regarding the authenticity aspect, but thought I'd have a go at cloning those twigs. It's fine if you don't like it, but it was just an idea. Thoughts?

Yeah, looks good! How did you do it?

[John Mack]

Great head turn here. Nice calling pose. Like how the feet are gripping that perch. A nice frame overall.

[Paul Burdett]

Dorian: If I told you I'd have to kill you

OK...I used a combination of the clone tool and the patch tool in Photoshop. Hard to explain here, but basically if you have a long twig, you can use the clone tool to make cuts in the twig (dividing it into sections) and then use the patch tool to make a selections around the parts of the twig. You can then move the selection to another area near the selection. This works a treat most of the time. The clone tool can then be used to remove other distracting bits of twigs etc. Hope this helps.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Dorian .... lovely singing pose in sweet light .
Nicely processed and I really like the overall colors .

Very nice work , TFS Andreas