This is one of the photographs I made while down at the alligator farm last week. Considering that the area was still little more than an evening roost for birds, I attempted to work on some artistic portraits instead of concentrating on the limited amount of courtship and nest building at hand. This is a BCNH of course, sitting on a live oak branch in dappled lighting. One little beam of light happened to be shining through the trees on this limb when the bird flew in making for, what I believe, a unique representation of a familiar subject.
This was taken just moments before one of the employees ran us off for the evening - hence the warm light. I considered scaling the warmth back a bit, but decided I liked it as is.
There are a couple of hot spots on the bird. In trying to keep detail in the shadows of the bird, those hot spots became inescapable. I tried like heck to bring those under wraps in the camera but just as soon as they didn't clip on the histogram, the wing and half of its head would fall into the featureless background.
Does work for me and I like it a lot !!! Would try working out the hot areas Could try in the conversion or could clone some texture in. Worth the work !!!
The dark bg would work for me if there would be less perch in frame...the black makes a good contrast with the red and white of the bird...but as the perch is already on the dark brown side it makes things look less attractive to my eye. I can imagine however how lovely this would look against a dark green vegetation...
I think the photo works very well. I don't mind the perch because the shadows on it add to the sense of drama. You might be able to salvage the hot spots in post-processing.
black crowned
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