The fog was heavy this morning at Circle B Reserve -- so much so that photography of subjects more than 10 feet away were washed out. But there were lots of cooperative Palm Warblers in the very soft light. This one is cropped from the vertical and some twigs cloned out to isolate the bird and the spider web. Thanks for looking.
Camera Model Name : NIKON D300
Lens ID : AF-S Nikkor 300mm f/4D IF-ED
Shutter Speed : 1/640
Aperture : 4.0
ISO : 640
White Balance : Auto
Focal Length : 300.0 mm (35 mm equivalent: 450.0 mm)
Focus Distance : 5.01 m
Depth Of Field : 0.04 m (4.99 - 5.03)
Auto Focus : On
Focus Mode : AF-C
Shooting Mode : Continuous
AF Area Mode : Dynamic Area (21 points)
Exposure Program : Manual
This image really caught my attention with the OOF spider web in the BKGD. The web is just enough in focus to make out what it is without being too distracting. I think if you lightened the bird and the branch a bit and sharpened the bird that would help the it stand out more. Perhaps a little more color too as the bird seems a little flat in the fog, which you indicated was working against you. Very well captured.
I really like the image, and thought Gary made some good points, so I've taken the liberty of playing with it a little. I'm not convinced that I've improved it but thought I would throw this up to see what you think. First, made a "Soft Light" adjustment layer at 30% opacity, to boost contrast and saturation a little; second, ran a moderate Topaz DeNoise on the BG (this removed some noise, but unfortunately also removed the nice pearly quality of the web in the OP; third, in Levels, set a white point on the white spot over the eye, at 30% opacity; and fourth, ran a tiny amount of DeNoise on the bird since boosting the contrast resulted in making the bird a little noisier. I think this last tweak also sharpened it a little. There was some sharpening halo on the perch, and I think I made it worse, but if you worked on the original this could be avoided. Hope you don't mind my using your image to experiment with.
David, my first thought was that the colours were too muted...upon opening the image in PS I realized you did not convert to sRGB before posting for web. This is a very important step to make sure people will see your image the way you intended as many web browsers are NOT colour managed. All I did here was convert to sRGB, nothing else. You, and many others may not see a difference, but for many others (including me) there will be.
I like the comp, and of course the web in the BG. Good pose from your subject too.
Amazing difference on my browser, Daniel (I'm using Google Chrome). I wondered why my uploaded repost didn't look at all the way it did when I viewed it in PS. This is probably why.
Bill: The soft light adjustment layer definitely improves it. That technique is (was) not in my PS repertoire. Thanks very much for the demonstration!
Daniel: You know, I had stopped converting to sRGB after some of posts with blue tones turned an awful turquoise (displayed in color-managed FireFox). I don't believe it was an out-of-gamut problem -- these were from the blue sky in this post (which was not converted to sRGB). This sounds like an opportunity for editorial-minded person.
Palm Warbler (Fog)
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