Canon 5d Mark II
EF 400mm f/5.6L USM
ISO 500
1/400sec
handheld; no flash
f/6.3
Ok, having spent some time reading about HA (thanks to all the wonderful info on this site!), I am learning. This is a cardinal taken in my yard a couple weeks ago. I welcome all comments/critiques.
PS Her tail was hidden, but should I have left space to suggest it?
Last edited by Melissa Groo; 09-28-2010 at 02:40 PM.
Melissa, nice image, here! You're a little overexposed on the head/left side but I bet you could tone that down a bit and then open up the right side of the head so it isn't quite so dark. (Do you know how to do this? If not, let me know...)
I love the BG and the aperture that you chose. The bird is sharp and nicely detailed, the HA is very nice and the tail is no big deal at this angle. If she had been turned more sideways so the tail went out of the frame then you'd need to leave some room.
Thanks so much for your comments, Jules. I suppose you mean dodging and burning? If you have another means of doing this, let me know. In the meantime, I will try that.
Hi Melissa, I'll give it a go. First of all I like that you have captured the bird in a good pose (crest up with pretty good eye contact and a nice catch light), I also like the colours of the cardinal against the fir tree and taht you nicely managed to get the bird's upper body and head in a separate focal plane from the branches around it, by using a widish aperure (although some might say that the nearer out of focus (OOF) branches in the image are slightly distracting?), as for whether you needed to allow room for a tail even though it isn't visible I would say, yes. A vertical shot here would have worked better as this bird appears taller than it is wide. With the cardinal approximately central in a vertical frame the brown leaf which is slightly distracting as presented might have been removed from the frame or at least only be part in the image. The exposure looks good, and you have good detail on most of the bird except for the blown bit on the top of the beak, which is caused by the subject being side lit, however I don't think this lessens the image considerably - although where possible try to position yourself so the sun/ light is directly behind you, however this isn't always easy with birds in trees like this one. Overall I like it but think the image would have been stronger as a vertical. Julian.
Hi Melissa - agree with Jules critique - except I find it needs more room at the bottom for the virtual tail - same deal with feet, you brain knows the tail is going to be there - but it is cut off, so IMHO it feels like it is clipped off even though it is not visible.
Same when you are photographing a bird with the feet not visible (Submerged in water or other) you still need to leave room at the bottom for the virtual feet.
Just my humble opinion!!!
Good HA and nice clear sharp eye - the red of the bird contrasts nicely against the green of the BG. Like how you have more room in front of the bird than behind (Usually what you want - more room in the direction the bird is looking)
Keep em coming.
Melissa, you certainly can do dodging and burning. I usually use levels or contrast adjustments and mask out the opposite areas. In other words, I'd lighten the eye/head area so it was where I wanted it and then add a mask and erase out the parts that are now too light using the brush tool and the FG set to black on the toolbar. When I have an area that's too light and I can't save it with a RAW file adjustment then I grab a color that's very close to what should be there, set the soft brush tool to 10-15% opacity and lightly paint the color over the hot white spots. Sometimes it works better to clone instead - it all depends.
I also like the Viveza plug in for this reason...it lets you set a particular area to change that lighter or darker without having to mask or paint. I use that plug in ALL the time!
I do like the repost though...you did a lovely job!
Yes, I've been reading quite a bit about Viveza, think I need to download a trial version and check it out!
As for the technique you suggest in PS, I don't know how to do that, but will try it soon.
Thanks again for being so helpful.
Very nice try, Melissa...you made huge strides. Here's what I added to your repost:
Used the sample tool to take a 3x3 sample of the medium green in the BG and then grabbed the soft brush set at 25% opacity and painted over the darker and lighter areas of the BG so they evened out a bit more. Very simple fix and it really helps the BG fade away while retaining the details. Some areas will only need to be painted over once; others I did several times.
Next I grabbed the red off the bird's bill and used the soft brush set to 50% opacity and painted over the light stripe across it's top until it blended with the rest of the bill.
After that I grabbed the beige color in the front feathers (again, using the sample tool so it goes into the FG color on the toolbar) and then I painted over the burned area that was more yellow on the top of the breast. Once the yellow was toned down I grabbed the clonoe tool and put the pattern back in the "hot" feathers using feathers next to where the burned ones were.
Finally, I added a bit of contrast to the eye and gave the colors a slight boost of saturation, pulling the reds back so the bill looked more natural.
I know...seems like a lot to fix the little things - that's why we preach exposure, exposure, exposure!!! :D
Oh my goodness!!! What an improvement! Looks like I need to really learn some more about PS! Or else, as you say, get better with exposure! Thank you so very much, I have learned so much just from this thread.
Good thread. Nice shot and great lesson from Jules, with big improvement in the last repost. I personally didn't mind the landscape version, which showed some nice oof bg, but I agree about the virtual feet, which is an issue in either format. The vertical repost is too tight in the frame for my preference. Still, a good initial image and learning experience.
Female Cardinal in Fir
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