Here's a female Choco Trogon from Rio Silanche, Ecuador. This is a fairly uncommon species so I was happy to get images of both the male and female at close range on our last tour down there. I took just a slice from the bottom.
I can only imagine how challenging it was to get this image. The eye is beautifully rendered and as mentioned the colour is great. Apart from the branches, the light area in the BG is distracting and could be burned in a little.
Beautiful species Nate! Agree with above suggestions. I would add that a bit more fill flash (an extra third or so) would have helped this image. You had a reasonably backlit subject and underexposed on the camera side of things. But you didn't increase your flash EC to offset the negative EC on the camera. The result is a slightly underexposed subject.
Last edited by Doug Brown; 04-30-2009 at 12:27 PM.
Nate:
I had a second, so I tweaked the background brightness a bit, and brought up the birds chest and head a bit.
I think John was right about the background.
Hopefully it still maintains the feel you were after and shows the bird well.
Lovely colours captured on the bird, and she is nicely framed between the two branches. In your original post, I agree the highlights in the BG were too much, and Randy has done a great job to tone them down.
Thanks for the comments, I think the flash is about right here, the original is a bit brighter, when I did the levels adjustment the grays and blacks darkened a bit. This species is dark gray with a black tail. With much more flash I would have been worried about blowing out the red channel and making the bird look a bit pasted from the flash. The negative exposure ambient compensation was to darken the bg a bit. I do like Randy's repost bringing down the bg a bit.
Last edited by Nate Chappell; 04-30-2009 at 02:23 PM.
The bird is killer and so is Randy' repost. It looks much better brighter. I wish for a cleaner look to the image but would be thrilled to have this one in my files.
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