Painted Bunting

[Jason G. Harrison]

Here is another image from one of my outings with this male Painted Bunting. Just finished storming...very windy. Heavy overcast and no light, so ISO 800 (do not like that high on the D300 as it hurts ultra fine feather detail).

Had to time this with the wind blowing him up and down and side to side. With that, I had a hard time with composition. This was an almost missed shot. I cropped part of the frame off due to all the clutter of leaves, etc...and as such, did not have enough room on the left as I would have liked.

I could not help the cut off leaves, as I was at minimum focus distance. In fact, with certain wind gusts, the branch would be too close for me to focus. I needed more DOF, but could not give up the SS as this was a handheld shot, with elbow support with my 600VR.

Taken with D300, 600VR, f/4, ISO 800, 1/200 ss



The darker areas on the left bother me some, but that is another bush coming into the frame, just vastly OOF. Hope you enjoy.

Jason

[Ramon M. Casares]

I am not crazy about the square crop although I have to admit that here it works ok. I Could suggest to tone down the red channel as it looks oversaturated on my monitor, beautifull species, pose, and detail.
Congratulations!

[Jason G. Harrison]

I am not crazy about the square crop although I have to admit that here it works ok. I Could suggest to tone down the red channel as it looks oversaturated on my monitor, beautifull species, pose, and detail.
Congratulations!

Thank you Ramon, and you are correct. I mistakenly forgot to drop the saturation on the red channel. I did a quick edit, and fixed that. This bird is tough not to blow the reds on. In fact, I found it very difficult to expose all the colors properly in bright sun. Cloudy or overcast days made it much easier, at least for me. Then the vibrant colors came through.

Anyway, here is the repost.



The reds are still over there on the histogram, but there is a gap before the edge;).

[Harshad Barve]

lovely pose , killer BG , and perch , repost looks better
TFS

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Jason...beautiful specimen. I liked the pose and the open beak. I infact liked the shallow DOF too. I agree that this would have ben better with full leaves. The leftmost leaf's clipping is a little distracting.

Another version of this could be a some CCW rotation and then cropping from bottom....so you have some room below the tail...and the leaves will be clipped more. That will also create a rectangular crop.