Chestnut-mandibled Toucan

[Nancy Bell]

This iconic tropical bird was a thrill to watch and a patient subject as I photographed. However no matter where it perched or where I moved the palm fronds with blobs of light were always the background :(. I used curves, targeted adjustments, selective color and whatever else I could find in CS5 to lessen the effect of the splotchy background. Did I do too much, too little? Is the final result pleasing?

Canon 40D, Canon 300 f4 L IS, 1/80, f4, ISO 640

Comments and critiques very welcome

[Richard Stern]

Hi Nancy,

A neat bird and a nice close-up. I like the lattice- like pattern made by the leaves to the right and above the bird. It's a little tight in the frame, and the face looks like it could be sharpened a little. The only other point about the leaves etc. that might improve the image would be if you could remove the brown tangle of dead (?) leaves behind the bird. Where was this?

Richard

[Nancy Bell]

Hi Richard. This was photographed in Costa Rica. I never even thought about those dead leaves behind the bird, I was so focused on the bright blotches.

[Arthur Morris]

You have done quite well with just enough d-o-f. The sky is borderline grayed out... I agree with Richard that the only distracting leaves are the sharp ones behind the bird.

[Greg Basco]

Nancy, these guys are always hard, and it looks to me that you did about as well as you could here with your capture and post-processing. The green palm leaves are just out of focus enough for my taste, and it looks like you succeeded in taming what I'm guessing were bright highlights in the background in that part of the image. I agree with Richard that a little bit of a looser crop might be nice.

Cheers,
Greg Basco

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Nancy, thx for sharing this. I liked the habitat in this one. Great colors. It must have been thrilling to shoot from so close. He gave you a nice head turn here....or rather you nailed the right one.