Turquoise-browed Motmot

[Bill Holsten]

Photographed in Costa Rica in April 2008 on Fotoverde Tour with Greg Basco.
OOF branch cloned out of URC.
EOS 40D, 300mm f/2.8 L IS + 2X, 1/80", f/9, ISO 400, Flash, tripod.
C & C welcome.

[Randy Stout]

Bill:

Striking bird,what a tail. Generally good exposure, but I wonder if the green channel is a bit hot in the turquoise feathers, as I don't see as much detail there as in the other areas?
The green background to the right competes a bit with the bird, might tone it down a bit. Be sure to post your images as close to 200 kb as you can, the quality will be better. This one is only 112kb.

Cheers

Randy

[Tom Redd]

Fantastic, beautiful colors, great species. The crop might be a bit tight for me (just my two cents), bit more canvas below the tail. Overall, wonderful.

[RAM MALLYA]

amazing color display and perch

[MohsenVahedipour]

Hi
what a nice bird with amazing colors. 1/80s is too slow for 600mm.

[Daniel Cadieux]

It must have been a thrill to observe and photograph such an amazing bird! This guy offered you a perfect over-the-shoulder pose, and you composed him very nicely in the frame. To me the image looks a bit too yellow overall, and the midtones seem a bit bright - perhaps due to a strong flash setting? I would also have opened up the aperture and raised the ISO. This would have helped smooth out the BG more, and give you additional SS. Thanks for sharing this beauty!!

[Doug Brown]

Nice clean look at this Motmot Bill. Good head angle. Daniel makes some great points on camera settings. Here's a repost in which I did the following in PS:
1. Created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to bring down the blues a little (-14)
2. Created a second Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to bring down overall image saturation (-8)
3. Created a Color Balance adjustment layer and moved the Yellow/Blue slider to +16
Better or worse?

[Ivan Sjögren]

Hey Bill.
An amazing shot, what a bird!
Nice that you got him in the open. Good comp, light and pose. Here's my try:


I tried to make the bg look more green overall, did some sharpening and toned down some colors on the bird. Hope this was allright with you.
Thanks for sharing!

[Doug Brown]

Here's a composite of the 2 versions of the image for comparison. The original is on the left.

[Bill Holsten]

Doug & Ivan,

Thanks for the constructive comments.

Doug, I think your version is a bit better. Although, the difference in appearance, side-by-side, is very subtle to my old eyes. I do have a tendency to get carried away with vibrance and had already backed it off somewhat before posting.

Ivan, there are two things I like about your version:
1) You have blurred the green blobs in the BG significantly, thus reducing the BG detail and causing the bird to stand out. I like it! I also blurred the BG, but not to the extent you did, because I don't know how to effect that much BG blur without blurring the edges of the bird.
2) The shift in BG color balance tones down the overly dramatic color difference between the left and right sides of the BG. This again draws the eye even more to the bird, where it belongs.
I very much like your version.

I only hope that one of these days I will be able to visualize and effect these kinds of adjustments before I post.

I photographed the same species in 2010 on Doug's CR trip and will post that image soon. Your further comments are invited.