Leucistic male Anna's Hummingbird

[Dan Brown]

I shot this guy this morning in between rain showers. After just returning from Costa Rica and missing the "Snowcap" hummer, when I saw this guy, I almost flipped out! I know that I have quite a few "blown whites" here, but in the excitement of discovering this little gem, I was lucky to have been able to keep my head and do a little bracketing to get a few shots that weren't "way blown". :eek: and to the naked eye in the field, the whites were really WHITE!!:eek::eek:

Camera Model: NIKON D300, handheld
Shutter speed: 1/640 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: Optional,TTL, -2
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 800
Lens: VR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D
Focal length: 400mm
VR Image Stabilization: On
AF mode: AF-S

[Lance Peters]

Hi Dan - amazing bird - have not seen one before - would go back to the RAW and see if you can recover some of the blown whites - best to start at the RAW. You have a good HA and nice details throughout the BG colours compliment the colours of the bird.
:)

[denise ippolito]

Dan, Really nice looking bird!! Lovely colors and I would try to recover the whites -This is really special thanks for sharing!!!

[Dan Brown]

Hi All, I have done everything that I know to recover the whites in ACR using shadow and lights adjustment, then in CS3, I applied S/H on the areas selectively. Any other suggestions?

[gary rouleau]

What a beautiful Hummer and BG. Not many choices left, you can try levels or the burn tool to cool them a bit, but I'm not a PS expert.
cheers
gary

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Dan CS4 has a neat feature in Camera Raw. It is called the adjustment brush. You can selectively add or extract exposure to very specific parts of your image. Maybe worth the upgrade, such a beautiful bird and shot.

[Gus Cobos]

This is a beautiful composition and image Dan...I like the soft pastel colored background...the color rendition on your bird is superb...I agree with Mr. Peters on the techs. Try going back to your RAW file and adjust your levels...:cool:

[Alfred Forns]

Great suggestions and fine looking bird !!! Recovery wise I'm not sure you can get the ones form the head? ... worth giving it a try !!!

[José Rodríguez]

Further the techs commented, I think it's a very beautiful image, colours are magic, and the subject is very strong. Happy to own the same combo!

[Dan Brown]

Thanks to all for the help here! For the repost, I was able to revisit the NEF file in ACR and recover alot of the whites!

[Kristin Brown]

Dan,

Great shot of a beautiful bird! I like the repost. The background and the bird remind me of some type of Asian painting. Lovely.