Nice idea, and good behavioural image, but there a few things that don't really work for me. Both birds, particularly the male, are "soft" with a combination of being a bit out of focus, and rapid movement. The background is bright enough to be distracting, and could use some desaturation. There is not enough room to the left or right of the image, and perhaps some canvas could be added there. It would have been nice to have the eye visible in the male bird. I'm not sure what the pink thing is amongst the seeds, but it doesn't look natural to me, and could be cloned out. Great overall sense of movement though.
I'd like to see some more images along these lines.
Yup, the background is too bright and the bird could use a bit more sharpening. I don't think the red bird is helping this image...not sure what its role there. It seems to be competing for attention with the main bird, properly because of its color. Details look good though on the main bird.
Last edited by Desmond Chan; 11-02-2010 at 11:01 PM.
Richard, I can see why you posted this as a behavioral image - that's exactly what it is. Birds can get very territorial about their dinnertime! I think even more important than the oversaturated look of the image is the fact that you have blown out both ends of the histogram. If you look at that you'll see that both the black end (left) and the highlight end (right) have very high spikes - and this means the image was not properly exposed in the first place.
You didn't really describe the conditions that you photographed these birds under but my guess is you were in some pretty harsh lighting. I'm not sure if fill flash would have helped bring up those low tones into the normal range or whether it would have only added to the over exposure of the brights. In any case, it's always better to start with an image that is exposed properly (or at least close enough that it can be recovered in post-processing) and go from there.
Born Bully
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