Roller display

[Chris van Rooyen]

I photographed this Lilac-breasted Roller earlier this year in the Kruger National Park. The display is quite impressive, with much calling and wing stretching. I removed a branch to clean up the composition.

Camera Model: NIKON D3
Date/Time: 2009:04:05 07:20:27
Shutter speed: 1/2500 sec
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure mode: Tv
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 2000
Lens: 500mm f/4 with 1.4 Extender
Focal length: 700mm

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful one Chris Bhai, loved the angel like pose, the open beak and BG add well here..

[Juan Aragonés]

Superb image Chris. I couldn´t resist the temptation to play with the image a few minutes in PS. Some parts of the shadows can be opened a bit more. Considering that blues play a very important role in the image and in the plumage of rollers, I think that a bit of additional yellow to the Bg would enhace the contrast between the bird and the BG. Blues works really well balanced with yellows. I added a touch of yellow to the Bg but you can go even far and add more. The pose of the bird is outstanding. Big congratulations for another top class image :)

[Desmond Chan]

Wonderful details and colors !! Comparing with the repost by Juan and based on what I see on my monitor, I prefer the original one. I think the darker shadow area in the throat and chest areas seem to give a better 3D feel to the image and the bird specifically. Perhaps a touch of contrast only rather than brightness boost?? :)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Cool pose, wing position and good BG, too. I like Juan's idea of making it a tad lighter.

[Doug Brown]

Nice behavior captured with a great pose! I like the bird in the original but I like what Juan did with the BG.

[paul leverington]

Chris --you sure do get some nice stuff. This is no exception. I suppose it would be nice to see a bit more of a head turn--but as is works very nicely too. I understand where Juan is coming from in his repost and all the augmented color contrast gained with boosting the yellow and lightening the bg sounds like a good idea, but to my eye the brighter bg becomes too powerful and competes with the bird subject. I would think a subdued bg would be better for subject separation. So I feel leaving the bg as is in OP would be better, and then bring up the breast colors by lightening to get some sparkle there. The blues on the wings in the second post also begin to look too neon and animated--not real IOW. But admittedly I do have a handicap in that I have never seen one of these in person to know exactly how the colors should really look. Lighten the bird some then a tich of lightening for the bg and see how it goes is what I would try if this were mine. Adding yellow here is too powerful IMO. Again, a very sweet image.

Paul

[Arthur Morris]

The leading and trailing edges of the wings look purple in the original post and a cyan blue in Juan's repost. Assuming that others are seeing the same thing does anyone know which of the colors is accurate???

Kill raised-wing pose and symmetry.

[Gerrie van Vuuren]

Striking pose & BG! The colours in the OP is as close to natural as "dammit" to swearing! Some noise visible on top 4 feathers of right wing? Still well done Chris!:)

[Raymond Barlow]

I like both images, very well done., the action is really well captured, and the colours remarkable.

[Chris van Rooyen]

Hi guys, thanks for the comments and suggestions. Juan, although the repost is striking, I personally I prefer the more natural look, the re-post is a bit too vivid for my personal taste (?). Must say I like the way in which you lifted the shadows in the breast feathers:) I guess in the end its a case of personal taste more than anything. Artie, I tried to keep the colours of the feathers as natural as possible, seeing that the bird is already very colourful.

[Harshad Barve]

Beautiful wing pose , nice HA , calling pose and BG works very well here, would love to see OP bird on Juans BG
TFS

[Juan Aragonés]

Hi guys, thanks for the comments and suggestions. Juan, although the repost is striking, I personally I prefer the more natural look, the re-post is a bit too vivid for my personal taste (?). Must say I like the way in which you lifted the shadows in the breast feathers:) I guess in the end its a case of personal taste more than anything. Artie, I tried to keep the colours of the feathers as natural as possible, seeing that the bird is already very colourful.

Chris you are wellcome :) This species looks almost like our eurasian roller in color and, in your original post, colors looks very natural and acurate to my eye so I did nothing with them. The only color modification that I did was to add a touch of yellow to the BG only. The saturation or color balance in the blue parts of the roller are the same as in the original post (except by the selective adjustment of levels in the shadows of the body and in the dark areas of the wing feathers). Perhaps the selective adjustment of levels creates the wrong sensation that the colors are modified.:confused:
One thing is for sure: the image is terrific ;)

[paul leverington]

Hi Juan--

Modify either hue, chroma, or luminosity and you would be changing the color --no?

Paul

[Arthur Morris]

Juan, Not sure of the reasons but the blues in your repost and the blues in the original look totally different (though less different than they did yesterday!)

[paul leverington]

Chris--I wanted to play with this one a bit and see if I could tickle a little more punch out of it, so here's what I came up with. I went to curves, put a lockdown at 42, grabbed 145 and lifted it to lighten, masked, inverted, grabbed a 400 pix full feathered brush and clicked one time in the middle at 100%. I did maybe four more minor clicks with a smaller 20% opacity brush to bring up the darker corners so as to keep down the bg contrast a little. I followed with a very, very, small subtle brushing (10% brush opacity)of shadow highlight recover on the breast(left and bottom mostly), and those dark primaries and secondaries. This could be left out really but gives a little different look than the higher contrast without it in those areas I feel.

My thinking like your own is to maintain the same colors as to be true as much as possible, so I only touched the brightness. This shot I strongly feel would benefit from a brightening and the brighter bg around the bird definitely seems to make him stand out better, best seen if you download and toggle between the versions in PS. The original is just a tad too darkish. IMO on all this of course.

It's a magnificent shot for real.

Paul

[Danny J Brown]

Hi Chris - Just running down the line checking what I've missed and I ran across this beauty. The OP is fantastic - no need to mess with it. Well done, as always!!!!

[Chris van Rooyen]

Thanks everyone, I learnt a lot from the different versions and techniques used on the image. Paul thanks for the detailed explanation:) Juan, on my monitor I do not see much difference in the blues myself between the original and your repost.

[Juan Aragonés]

It is really interesting to see how different things can be seen in different monitors (I think that we all have calibrated ones). I think that images posted by Chris are really well processed and there is no reason for color correction, so I did nothing to blues except levels adjustment in the dark areas of the primary feathers but, as a result, the colors seems to be altered in other´s monitors and I wonder about the reason why. I am using a calibrated monitor and Firefox.

Artie, the colors in my repost are exactly the same tham yesterday :confused:

Paul, from a technical point of view I think that you are right (quote: "Modify either hue, chroma, or luminosity and you would be changing the color --no?") but I was refering to the fact that I did not a modification in the color balance (except to the BG, of course). An unadequate color balance modification is the main reason explaining why an image that looks great in our own monitor looks really bad in a different monitor. I think that the best way to avoid that is to keep color balance modification at minimum.

Chris I think that we are talking more about processing than about your excelent image. I apologize because it was not my intention :):)

[Danny Laredo]

Sweet image and stunning pose Chris.

[Chris van Rooyen]

Its been an interestng discussion, thanks again for everyone who contributed:)