Super inquisitive pose, and the twig in the beak takes this over the top. Light, exposure and detail all good, and nice and sharp too. I would maybe run another round of NR on the BG.
Nice coy pose here. Stick a plus. Good exposure. I actually like the bill shadow, it mimics the pattern in her breast feathers. I would consider toning down the brightness of the perch just a bit on the right side.
Improvement with each repost. I think that the mid-tones and darks of the bird need to be a big lighter. Love the pose and the tiny twig.
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Per Artie's suggestion. I brought up the midtones and darks of the bird a bit. Not a perfect selection, you can see a bit of halo effect, but it does demonstrate the change well I think. I have spent a lot of time looking at these girls recently, and agree with Artie about the midtones. Thanks for the advice.
Randy. YAW. Thanks for your excellent repost. I would have preferred the perch still dark. You could have hit Control A, Control J, did the lightening and then erased the perch (and the BKGR if need be) or, did a rough selection of the bird with a QM.
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
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Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
The only thought on your repost, I might lower the contrast in the perch. Although it is much darker, the contrast of dark and light areas still catches the eye.
Yes, the bit about too close to your own work is really true. What I try to do, is to do my work on the image to what I think looks best, put it aside and review at least a day later before I post. Give you a bit of fresh perspective. Sometimes I ignore my own rule, and often the final image suffers for it.
Hey Don, Better on the bird--the face and head could be a bit lighter for my taste. I do prefer David Thomasson's brown perch with no contrast.
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BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
When toning down something like this perch, multiply mode often increases contrast and saturation too much in the process of darkening. Here's a way around that. Darken instead with curves, pulling down the top end of the curve, and perhaps also the middle a bit. This will darken but leave the colors a bit bland. Add a blank fill layer in color mode to restore some life to the wood tones. You can play around with the fill color to get just the saturation you want.
Last edited by David Thomasson; 05-15-2009 at 03:19 PM.
Gross
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