Blue Whistling Thrush

[RakeshDhareshwar]

A trip to North India , my first yielded me a lot of lifers for me ....70+ species in a span of 5 days .

Had to overexpose the bird to ensure details seen on the dark bird.

Lovely song this bird has too.

Shot with a Canon 1D Mk III , 600mm f4 IS on a Wimberley Gitzo combination .

C&C welcome.

Cheers ,
Rakesh

[Jim Fenton]

I do like the pose on the subject.

The DOF field is to shallow IMHO as all of those lovely diagonal details in the blue tail feathers aren't in the plane of focus.

Overall the image appears to have been created in the shade and comes across as rather too cold / bluish overall.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The bird looks a bit dark and I agree regarding the blue cast. Raising the color temperature and using curves should fix this. I would also remove the whitewash on the perch.

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Jim , thanx for the perfect critique on this one. The bird has a natural affinity towards shadows and dark places . In as many as 30+ sightings in 5 days , I saw this bird in sunlight all of 5 seconds ...that too in flight :) . Will try reprocessing this one to get the warmth up and post the results.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Rakesh, loved the composition and the pose. You should be able to pull out some details from the darks from the RAW file I think. But he was probably too close to you...and you could not use smaller aperture due to light?

[Arthur Morris]

Actually, as presented, there is both highlight (mostly on the rock) and shadow clipping.... How are you converting?

[Arthur Morris]

Despite the above, I like the image, the bird, and the head angle. I ran an average blur color balance with toned down the purples a bit.

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Thanx for that , Artie . The toned down purple has immensly helped this one .

[Arthur Morris]

You are welcome sir. You missed my question in Pane #6.

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Artie , I use ACR 3.7 to convert my images . I correct only the WB using the ACR , and curves to fine tune the exposure .

[Arthur Morris]

Rakesh, Are you not using the Highlights Slider and the Blacks Slider all the while holding down the ALT key??? If not, that would explain the over-exposed highlights and possibly the under-exposed shadows as well....