Purple gallinule (Porphyrio porphyrio)

[Juan Aragonés]

An image from the past summer. The head of a purple gallinule raises in the middle of a rice crop field, a sea of green and gold colors from the mature plants almost ready to be collected.

Nikon D300, AFS Nikkor 500VR+1,4XTC, handheld from the car, manual exposure, 1/400s f5,6 ISO800, about 95% full frame
Coments and critics are always welcomed :)

[Luis Villablanca]

Beautiful image. I love the composition, colors and contrast between the bird and the surroundings.
The shallow DOF works really well here.

[Bryan Hix]

I really like how the bird's colors stand out against the surroundings. The DOF and the orange along the top are what I like the most.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like this a lot. The wide crop works really well, great light, setting and composition. It could go a tad brighter for my taste.

[Ramon M. Casares]

LOVE IT! Such mood, comp, light, and not and easy species.
I wouldn't mind hang this one on my wall at home!
Congratulations!

[Mike Fuhr]

Very nice image! I agree with the comments above -- the uniformity of the habitat makes it for me. You could also go with a pano that would be very effective.

[Harshad Barve]

Super image , loving that purple head popoing out of greens
TFS

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Qué buena Juan!

Hace días que no veo nada de tu trabajo! qué está pasando!!!
Me imagino que tienes mucho trabajo.

Nice looking gallinule, the grass around it makes the image for me, well, I know it is both things working together. Hope to see more of your work soon. ;)

[Rod Warnock]

Magic perception, Juan !! And magic handling of the material at hand. The seeing eye indeed !! Like the use of selective focus, the composition, the sharp band including that gallinule.
Thanks for showing
Best regards
Rod Warnock

[niranjan sant]

superb image,and superb compo. the purple looks too sturated on my monitor[ may be my monitor need corection]

[RAM MALLYA]

Superb composition and DOF with the bird sticking out its head . Colorful background.

[Juan Aragonés]

Axel I think that you are right and perhaps the image is a bit light. I followed your advice and worked on a new version but I only darkened the lower part of the frame keeping the orange untouched (darkening the orange produced a not very pleasant result IMO)

[Harshad Barve]

Repost takes this beautiful shot over the top

[Juan Aragonés]

Ramón, if you want to hang a copy of this one in your walls just let me know, it will be a pleasure to trade a copy of it for one of your beautifull images (I have space free at home ;))

Mike, the pano suggestion is a good idea (I like panos a lot) but how to crop this image without croping the beautiful orange at the top of the frame?

Juan Carlos, during the last three-four months I have been so busy at the office that there was no free time to devote to photography or to BPN but now I am recovering my normal activity pattern :)

Niranjan, the purple looks OK in my monitor. I know that you have this species in your country and if you have seen one in the wild you will agree with me that the purple of the neck and head is highly related to the angle and amount of light. Perhaps the spanish and indian populations shows some kind of plumage variation :) (you can search for images of "calamon" (the spanish name of the species) in Google and you will see how much variation can be found in the color saturation of the bird in relation to the light

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Hi Juan!
I actually prefer the original - the colours are just lovely and I love the unusual composition. I love the shallow DOF as well.
Best,
Nicki

[Harshad Barve]

Niranjan, the purple looks OK in my monitor.

Colors of Purple Moorhen we have here are slightly dull compared to what you have posted

[paul leverington]

Hi Juan-

I guess I'd be the odd man out if I were to say it's a bit dark and oversaturated. My monitor is a good one and calibrated and I'm using firefox so I hope I'm seeing this correct. Just doesn't look natural here. But hey--maybe I got it wrong since everyone else see's it different.

I played a little with--not trying to improve upon the original--but rather giving it a different possible look. So it's not really to be compared to the OP, just to be taken on it's own value.

Paul

[Ilija Dukovski]

Great one, I love it. The habitat and two color BG are excellent.
The bird's colors in stark contrast to it. Very nice.

[Juan Aragonés]

Paul your input is apreciated, I always look forward to see what others think and suggest about my images :)
I am using Firefox, like you, my monitor is calibrated and I did not a color balance modification in the image, only the usual saturation boosting that I use during RAW conversion in Adobe RAW converter (between 10-15). I only did a minor levels adjustment to the RAW, because I always tend to overexpose my images a bit just to get a better result in my processing job (is part of my processing routine) and colors should be very natural or very close to the ones in the original capture. It was late in the day when I photographed this guy and the light was very, very rich in gold, specially in the far field at the top of the frame (the foreground is in subtle shadow). Your post looks very green in my monitor and light is really different to the one I enjoyed that day.

Here is a screen capture of the RAW converter. :)

[Doug Brown]

Superb image Juan! Great vision on your part, and it helps to have a cooperative purple bird in that field of green and gold. I would be tempted to lighten the bird a little.

[Tony Whitehead]

Well seen, Juan. This bird is very common in NZ where it is known as pukeko. We don't unfortunately have green and gold rice fields to create an image like this:( My preference is the original post.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the OP as much as the repost. This is a beautiful composition Juan!

[arash_hazeghi]

Excellent Juan, love your 2nd repost. Congrats!

[Nonnie Saran]

Lovely habitat shot of the bird , looks just as a painting . Great colours and lighting . TFS

[paul leverington]

Howdy Juan--The screenshot looks good as far as being lighter. Well-- Like I said earlier, I might have to check things out for color accuracy on my sytem maybe, as others are not seeing it as a little too dark---which then makes it look oversaturated a tad here. My repost was something that happened to it when I was playing with the red channel in curves. I was in curves trying to lighten it in rgb mode then thought to try just the individual channels to see what would happen. So I grabbed the red channel line midway and pulled it to lower the red content. That was it. No green added. No it's not the original shot as it was, but still I thought it looked pretty cool with the blue-purple of the bird in opposition of the yellow sunset light. The green becoming a third strong comp element and acting as a pivot for the opposition colors--all this creating greater eye movement--or so I thought anyhow. Just a different look that surprised me when it emerged from my random tinkering. I know it's not what was seen at the time you shot it, but an interesting noteworthy change seeing that all the green necessary was already in the pic.

Paul

[Krijn Trimbos]

It is a very cool shot Juan! Love the species and colours in this shot and especially the composition! Perhaps a tiny bit on the warm side, but certainly not too bright on my calibrated monitor! Keep up the good work! And hope you'll have a great 2010 my friend!