Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

[Bill Dix]

D90; 80-400 VR @ 400mm. ISO 400. f/7.1 @ 1/2500s. Matrix metering, -1.0 EV. HH.

Last week in Hog Island WMA. I know the capture angle is a bit steep - I had a few frames on a lower perch but with poor HA, and I feared the HAP. At 3:45 PM, light was still somewhat high and harsh. Exp. comp. should probably have been more like -0.3; I had to lighten it up a little in PP and created some noise in the belly feathers. Otherwise, a cute little bird. C&C appreciated.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Bill, Agree with your self critique but your PP skills certainly helped the image. I feel the image would be further improved by removing the OOf branch.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - agree with your self critique - appears to be a lighter blue patch under the beak - that might have been missed??
Do see some noise as mentioned - agree with Dave on the removal of the OOF branch.
:)

[Bill Dix]

Hi Bill - agree with your self critique - appears to be a lighter blue patch under the beak - that might have been missed??
Do see some noise as mentioned - agree with Dave on the removal of the OOF branch.
:)

Thanks Lance. I did miss that spot. It appears that when I masked the bird I included the area of fine feathers beneath the bill (and a similar spot beneath the rump); I then boosted the saturation of the sky without including those areas in the sky layer. And then failed to scrutinize the image before posting it. I appreciate your pointing it out. As to the OOF branch, I agree although it would be a challenge to my cloning skills. But worth a try.

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Bill

Basically a nice capture. I would have cropped so that perch did not enter at right bottom corner. You could get rid of the branches by using the color picker and match the sky near the branches you want to remove with the brush, a little bit of adjusting the opacity for final matching and using full hardnes carefully when when getting near the joiin. With a bit of practise it would be a 10 min job.

TFS

Gus

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Gus. The tricky part is where the oof branch intersects the others, but it's worth a try when I get a moment.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks to all for the helpful comments. I finally got around to removing the oof branch, plus a little work in levels, removal of dark lines at some branch edges, and removal of a bit of the noise using Topaz Dejpeg.