Green-Crowned Brilliant

[Doug Brown]

I photographed this beautiful hummer at Rancho Naturalista in Costa Rica under a pretty dense jungle canopy on an overcast and rainy day. Not a lot of avaiable light. Fill flash sure does help!



Canon 1D Mark III, 500mm + 1.4x, f/5.6, 1/125, ISO 1000, fill flash, tripod

[Paul Wolf]

Doug, you've done a great job under those conditions, especially being able to come away with a sharp image at 1/125. I'm lucky to get anything acceptable below 1/400 with that lens combo. The only thing I might suggest would be to dodge the eye and immediate area to bring that out even more, and I wonder it if could stand another round of light sharpening.

Paul

[Linda Robbins]

Lovely pose and sharp detail. The image appears just a tad dark to me. I would lighten the mid-tones a bit and lighten the area around the eye a little.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

I know exactly what you mean about dim rain forests!

Very nice male, great looking perch and details. I would try to clone/fix the halo around the perch on the right behind the tail.

[Juan Aragonés]

Fantastic BG, head turn, sharpness, composition and exposure. Man, this is a fantastic image that I would love to have in my files ;-)

Love the iridescences on the throat

[Stu Bowie]

Doug, super comp and pose. You have done extremely well under the conditions you described. Great flashwork to bring out the colours, and love the iridescence. Great capture.

[Aidan Briggs]

Good job with the low light. Love the iridescence. Might lighten the image a tad.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great iridescence, details and eye contact. Adding to the other comments, there are some artifacts in the BG, probably due to compression.

[Indranil Sircar]

Beautiful composition, Doug. I love the colors. The burn and dodge effect makes the bird stand out with this beautiful background.

[arash_hazeghi]

Love the colors and detail, it does have the ambiance of a rain forest.

[Dan Brown]

Great job once again Doug! I think that I have shots of the same individual with the white feathers on the forhead! I think that these are moulting feathers but not sure?

[Doug Brown]

Thanks for the feedback. If you haven't done rainforest photography before, it's quite challenging. There just isn't enough ambient light, so flash is a must. Striking the right balance with your flash takes a great deal of practice; you strive to get good natural-appearing illumination of your subject without having it look flashed. Just 1/3 of a stop of FEC too much can really mess up an image.