D300s
500 F4 @ F4.5
ISO 200
1/200 s
Blue Bird
D300s
500 F4 @ F4.5
ISO 200
1/200 s
Nice shot of this lovely bird. Good soft light, comp, bg and pose. I would sharpen the face a bit more, how much did you crop? Have some more rome below?
Thanks for sharing.
Roy, the way the perch is half in/half out of the image made me want to try a few additional crops on this one. First, I felt the bird had too much negative space above and to the left so I tried a crop that kept the entire branch in but soon realized that nothing made it work any better than what you had chosen. I then switched it up and went with a much smaller crop - an 8 x 10 size - and put the bird's eye towards the upper left third grid mark on the ROT's. This eliminated most of the branch that seemed to pull my eye out of the frame. I did a simple clone job on the little bit in the LLC that was towards the left and anything along the bottom of the frame so it looked like a cleaner perch.
The image also felt a little dark so I pulled it up with levels and then did a surface blur on the BG to even out the little bit of noise that was there. I gave the eye a bit of contrast "pop" and gave it just a tiny bit more sharpening on the feathers.
These are all just ideas for you to play with to see if you want to incorporate them into your final image - totally your choice. I just thought I'd put them out there.
This is actually a really good lesson for those people who never are sure what to crop in or out; you don't always have to include every inch of perch or other items that are "non-focal point". Make the focal point work inside the space of the frame and then decide what to crop - I think it brings you to a stronger image almost every time.
A beautiful portrait of this bird, Roy...you got a lovely image here!
Hi Roy - Great advice from Julie - makes some very good points. Juliee repost has certainly improved the image.
Good HA - Relatively slow SS for the focal length - might have pushed that ISO up a bit to give some safety margin.
Good show :)
Thanks for your replies. This is the original straight out of the camera, how would you crop it?
I think you made a pretty sharp image from such a heavy crop Roy. As an alternative to Jules' tighter crop I might consider going for a much looser crop where you incorporate the interesting branches under the bird. You may have to do a bit of branch removal and that fits with your processing style. A looser crop would also not put as much strain on the image quality. Really nice Mountain Bluebird by the way. I wish we had them out east!
IS a large crop -Not familiar with these beauties - guessing they are hard to approach - any possibility to get closer Roy??
Is That a Nikon 500mm - Does work with the 1.7 X converter - slows the AF a bit - but for stationery subjects does work - IQ takes a little hit also - but will give you more reach!!!
Roy,
Greetings. Interesting crop conundrum. The original uncropped image presents a very good color contrast to the subject (reds & greens) in the background that is lost with much cropping and I think a pretty good composition in itself, excepting for subject size. Sigh. I tried but couldn't come up with the right balance... given the choice you did pretty good with the OP crop.
I might deepen the red & green in the OP to bring out the color contrast.
Thanks for posting... beautiful bird.
Cheers,
-Michael-
John, I was surprised at how well it held up with such a heavy crop. I thought it might make a good card of some kind. The grass is always greener.:DOriginally Posted by John Chardine
Lance, it was a grab shot while we were photographing marmots. The aren't really hard to approach but in this area they almost all nest in nest boxes put up over miles and miles. I have some decent shots of them but they are on wire fences.
Michael, good suggestion for deepening the red and green.
I am no big fat expert, but I really like John Chardines suggestion, the branches below really add to the photograph, especially the Letharia vulpina, but then...its a lichen!
Kat Enns
Castlegar, BC
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