Eastern Spinebill

[Leo Berzins]

Eastern Spinebills are small, active honeyeaters. I captured this one pausing briefly on a Kangaroo Paw stem on a rainy afternoon.

Canon 50D, 400f/5.6L, 1/160s, f/5.6, ISO 400, Av mode, EC +2/3, tripod
minor crop for composition, NeatImage noise reduction

[Randy Stout]

Leo:

Lovely soft light, well exposed, sharp where it needs to be, good job at this shutter speed. I might have been tempted under those lighting conditions to push up the ISO to give myself some more flexibility in SS and DOF, but you did well.

I might consider cropping as a vertical, to remove part or most of the bright specular reflections in the LUC.
In a perfect world, I wish the top of the perch was cut off by the frame edge. It tends to lead your eye right out of the frame. The lower frame edge/perch intersection works for me, as that line tends to lead your eye to the bird, but, the upper one draws you out of the frame. Just how it struck me.

Cheers

Randy

[Peter Farrell]

Beautiful image and bird. I like the pose, perch and HA. I like this crop and composition but wish the oof vegetation on the left was not there.
Peter

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'm with Peter in that I like the comp as is but wish the OOF vegetation at left was not present. I love the various web strands strewn about the plant, very neat! Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it looks like NR was also applied to the bird as opposed to BG only?

In a perfect world, I wish the top of the perch was cut off by the frame edge.

Randy, I believe you meant to say that you wish the top of the perch was NOT cut off above?

[Arthur Morris]

Killer bird, perch, light, SH, and BKGR. A vertical might have been even better. I love the buds/flowers (???) and the dew.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

You are right of course, typo on my original post, since corrected.

Randy

[Rob Drummond]

Wonderful Leo; you've really captured that flightly feel in this shot. Great perch and pose.

cheers
Rob

[Hilary Hann]

This is a lovely Australian image which would look good on a Christmas card. The Kangaroo Paw looks like it has icing sugar on it and you have captured this difficult bird very well. I agree with the comments regarding the oof vegetation in the background, but that could be cropped out (or artworked out if not against your principles).

[Leo Berzins]

Thanks all for the comments and suggestions which are greatly appreciated as always.

I'm with Peter in that I like the comp as is but wish the OOF vegetation at left was not present. I love the various web strands strewn about the plant, very neat! Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it looks like NR was also applied to the bird as opposed to BG only?...

You're right Daniel, NR was applied to the whole image, but I could not detect any difference on the bird between images with and without NR.

The OOF vegetation on the left is a deliberate personal choice. We haven't had much rain here recently and the OOF dripping foliage on the left anchors this image in time and place for me, but I agree that patching or cloning it out would give the image wider appeal.