Been awhile since I last posted a image. Taken at Malhuer NWR in eastern, Or.
D2x's 80-400mmvr at 360mm, iso 320 1/400s at f7.1 matrix metering, wb daylight. processed in camera raw and cs4. slight crop, shadow/highlights to bring out backlite bird.
Thanks for looking and all comments/ suggestions welcomed.
Great pose and the bird looks pretty sharp. I'd lighten the bird just a bit to bring out the colors and details a little more.
I'd probably also crop it one of two ways, depending up on the original. One would be to cut off over half of the perch to balance out with the bird. The other would be to leave the perch as is but open the picture to give a "bird in setting" kind of feel. (I hope that made sense.)
I like the perch & the BG. The image is sharp with a pleasing pose. Based on the perch, there appears to be a blue cast on my monitor. Do you think there is a blue cast in the original?
Thanks for the nice comments and suggestions, I tried lighten the shadows a little in curves, and removed the blue cast by desaturating the blues in hue/saturation.
Craig, I agree...the repost looks much more natural. I agree with Paul on the crop, though...I'd take the bottom of the frame up just above where the side log is so it is totally eliminated. I also ran noise reduction on the BG and did a curves adjustment on the eye to try to bring out a little more detail. I cloned out the hot white patch near the beak and calmed down the backlit feathers just a bit with a low opacity painting over those areas using the colors in the feathers next to it.
Let me know if you need more details in anything I just said. I'm just a bit too tired to type that much tonight!
Thanks Julie for the changes to the image and also the explanations, everyone's suggestions helped make it a much better image. So thanks to all.
Craig
California Quail
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