rare beauty

[John Chardine]

I have been lucky enough to visit the Galapagos Islands- in September 2006. It was a great trip!

This is the endemic Galapagos Flycatcher perched on an Opuntia cactus. The colour of the bird resonates so well with the surrounding vegetation.

I would very much like to have another go at this bird with my 40D!

Nikon D70, 18-200mm AF-S VR @ 200mm. 1/250s, F5.6, 3/4 crop, levels, slight dodge of face

[Harold Davis]

beautiful capture, john.

[Rod Wiley]

Really nice capture, I think if you would do a color range ( select/color range) and put the eye dropper on the brightest part of the back ground and move the fuzziness slider to select the background and not the bird, then use a curve adjustment to darken the background and then the curves to lighten the bird it will show a little better. It seems at least on my monitor that the birds face is shadowed a little. I hope you don't mind the suggestion
Rod

[Gail Yovanovich]

On my monitor, I wouldn't want to see the BKG any lighter than this, except perhaps the upper righthand corner. I would rather see the BKG blurred a bit. But this is a nit. A lovely image, John - nice pose, and the bird has such a great attitude.

Cheers....Gail.

[Gayle Clement]

Beautiful background and very nice head position. A slightly darker background would add to this already great photo.

[Arthur Morris]

Rod nailed it: darken the BKGR and lighen the birdie. Like the image design and the rim lighting.

later and love, artie

[John Chardine]

Many thanks for all the good comments and tips. I'll play around a bit with selective lightening and darkening.

[John Chardine]

Here's a go at editing the image to change the relative brightness of the bird versus the background. I remember making the phoo very well and the way the bird was situated sheltered it from light that was hitting the background. Thus the first post more accurately portrayed what I saw. I did the edit to learn how to do it but would likely not go this far as it is beyond my "editing comfort zone" and does not reflect reality.

The edit involved duplicating the image and creating a mask. Painting out the mask over the bird and then selectively changing levels on each layer to achieve the result.

[Arthur Morris]

Much more even but the three white reflections off the leaves bug me.

later and love,

artie