one more quetzal

[susanschermer]

Todd Gustafson provided our group with a first-rate encounter with the quetzals. The climb put us at eye-level with their favorite perches in the avocado tree. I feel blessed to have gotten some very satisfying poses. I can't resist posting another. I like this one for its' painterly feeling.
Canon 1D Mark III, 400 f/4DO lens, ISO 800, f/4, 1/1000, 580EXflash @ -2/3

[Doug Brown]

This is probably my favorite pose in the series Susan. I really like the curve to the tail feather, and the eye contact is quite good. I also like the framing of the image. I would try to selectively sharpen the head. I would be tempted to clone out the branch above the head. And I would tone down a couple of bright spots in the BG.

[Tony Whitehead]

I agree, this is my favourite of the series. Doug has covered all the points I had already. Love the curves of the tail feathers.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Very nice pose and eye contact. Adding to Doug's suggestion I would clone out the diagonal OOF branch in the lower right.

[Robert O'Toole]

Beautiful Susan, the curves in the tail feathers is just great.

I like the image but just a few changes would improve the images impact. I would sharpen the birds face a little. Also I would darken the hot spots on the perch branch. And I would run NR on the BG. The image has quite a bit of Lumi noise for a EOS-1DMKIII image, usually this is from underexposure in camera.

Robert

[susanschermer]

Thanks, Guys. I started from RAW, gave it a little tighter crop, eliminated some of the distracting BG elements, darkened the hot spots, sharpened the head more.
The one thing I can't wrap my head around is the noise issue. This photo wasn't underexposed in the least. Noise Ninja had no effect at all.

Still, I don't think it has more impact than the original.

[Dan Brown]

Hi Susan. Another great Quetzal shot! Love it! I do see noise also however! In my repost, I QM'ed the bird and then opened in Noise Ninja, auto profile, selected the area within my circled area, reduced the USM filter slider as far to the left as it would go then set the other filter sliders to 12. If you look in the circled area, you should be able to see the resulting reduced noise. I don't know why we sometimes get this noise, but N.N. seems to have reduced it.

Happy Holidays:)