Keel-billed Toucan

[Bill Holsten]

Recently returned from amazing workshop in Costa Rica with Doug Brown and Greg Basco. Lots of opportunities to photograph Toucans. This one had been visiting a banana feeder and had backed off to this perch for a rest. I had to clone out some twigs extending from the perch behind and to the left of the bird's head. Having the perch exit the frame out of the upper left corner would not be my first choice, but the alternatives were worse. Comments welcome.

EOS 7D, 300mm f2.8 +1.4X 1/400" f/8 ISO 400 Gitzo tripod no flash

[Jeff Parker]

I like the diagonal perch. Exposure looks good, a challenge with the yellow and black.

[Chris Korman]

I like the composition, I'd also try cropping an inch or so off the bottom so that the branch makes a complete diagonal, and see if that improves on the composition by comparing them. Is there any motion in this shot? Maybe its the bokeh but it seems like the bird has a slight blur at the beak.

[Steve Large]

Hi Bill,
Beautiful color and nice atmosphere about this shot. I think that the vegetation on the left competes with the bird a bit though. Here is what it would look like as a portrait format.

Take care,

Steve

[Daniel Bailey]

Oustanding color... I agree with about cropping two inches from the bottom.

I'd stick with the horizontal frame.

[Doug Brown]

Hey Bill. Glad you had a good time! You captured a perfect head angle and a great open bill. I like the BG too. I like a horizontal crop but agree with the suggestion to crop a little off the bottom of the frame. I'm not seeing any motion blur in the bill; the top of the bill is easily overexposed and tends to look brighter than any other part of the bird. That might be causing a bit of 'glow' around the bill.

[Tom Rambaut]

What an amazing bird!!

Have you done anything to the background? The branch and bird seem to pop out from the background.

HA seems to be spot on - getting to understand this head angle issue now.

[Gary Esman]

Beautiful colors! Man that bird looks like it needs a tripod to stay balanced. Do agree with the crop. Great job on the removal of the limbs would not have known if it was not mentioned.

Gary.

[Gary Hamilton]

I love toucans and it is nice to see the recent keel billed posts. Nice PP work with the cloning of the branches. I wonder if you could have gotten away with a little less depth of field so that the fanned foliage in BG would have been less noticeable. However, that might have created some bright blobs that might be more distracting than the foliage lines.

[Dan Brown]

Awesome bird and capture Bill! Love the colors, sharpness, and BG especially! Some fine tuning suggestions, keeping the horizontal crop, I would not only crop from the bottom but also crop from the right over to the end of the broken branch, making it seem to continue. And I'd crop a little from the left so that the main branch does not come from the corner of the frame but from just below the corner. Great capture from what I know was a great trip for you!

[Keith Bauer]

Hi Bill: Very nice. Amazing birds. I like the horizontal crop. Maybe moving it down the the frame just a little?? Sounds like you guys had a great time again this year. Glad to hear it!!

[Stuart Dennis]

Hi Bill, I really really like this shot. I agree with the suggestions to crop slightly off the bottom. The bird is isolated nicely and the background appears nice and clean. Would you care to share some info on your pp workflow (program, sharpening and NR settings?) That (pp) is the area I struggle after shooting in similar environments (I am in Panama).

[Katie Rupp]

Hey Bill, you know I love these toucans and you have captured him very nicely! I think I like the vertical crop suggestion which really shows off the great radiating light pattern in the bg from the palm fronds. It was a great trip, thanks to Doug and Greg for a terrific workshop.

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice , love the pose, perch and colors, flash was used very nicely.

[Giulio Zanni]

Very nice. I would have liked to see the full tail.

Giulio

[Alan Lillich]

I like the portrait crop better, and agree with the earlier comments about taking some off the bottom for the horizontal crop. Alan Murphy gave us some composition teaching one afternoon. One of the things he talked about was ratios of area in various parts of a photo, especially in cases like this where the branch divides the whole image. There is more area below the branch than above, and it is totally empty. I think this is the explanation for why the OP crop feels off to some of us.

[Bill Dix]

Spectacular bird, terrific shot. I personally like the fanned foliage - adds some interest; and I like the horizontal crop, but with a tad off the bottom. I dream of doing half as well when I go to CR next month.

[Pieter de Waal]

What a beautiful bird Bill, such vibrant colours and well captured. Lots of suggestions but I like your original showing the habitat and agree with cropping a little off the bottom. The BG with the subtle leaf patterns adds to the sense of enviroment. TFS.

[Johan Kruger]

This trip must have been an amazing experience, great moment created of an absolutely awesome bird. Like the original post.

[Bill Holsten]

Thanks to all of you who have viewed this image and provided your thoughtful and constructive comments. I have learned something about personal taste and style from your comments, namely that there is no well-defined best approach to composition and post processing. To illustrate the post processing challenge I faced, this first repost is the original image after conversion in LightRoom untouched by the magic of Photoshop. This challenge was so daunting that I very nearly decided to take a pass on this image, rather than labor over it in Photoshop.

The second repost is a portrait-cropped version that incorporates some of your comments. It is certainly a cleaner image, pretty much dominated by the bird. The reason I didn't choose this crop in the first place is that I really like the perch and wanted it to carry more wait in the composition. I also really like the degree of abstractness in the OOF palm fronds and wanted to show them off.

The third repost is a more tightly-cropped landscape version, that somewhat de-emphasizes the perch and background and gets the perch out of the absolute corner of the frame. On reflection, this is my favorite of the three images, however, the upper left corner does suffer from the blotchiness inherent in the heavy use of the cloning and healing tools.

Bill

[Bill Holsten]

Second Repost - Portrait format

[Bill Holsten]

Third Repost - Landscape format

This is my favorite, but it still needs a bit of work.

[Dan Brown]

Third Repost - Landscape format

This is my favorite, but it still needs a bit of work.

This third repost is my favorite also Bill. I would like it even with the bg branch. Nice!

[Doug Brown]

I like the most recent repost the best. One more suggestion; I'd try to pull a little more detail out of the blacks. What a great perch!

[Alan Lillich]

I like the 3rd repost best also. You did a nice job in the upper left corner, I don't see any blotchiness in the web version.

[RakeshDhareshwar]

When you have such a brilliant image , you can experiment loads with crops and find that all of them look awesome . Hats off to such an extraordinary capture !!

[Ofer Levy]

Beautiful. I prefer the original post. Composition is nicely balanced and I like seeing the awesome part of the perch on the top left. All the reposts look much less pleasing to me.

[Greg Basco]

Hi, Bill. Really beautiful light on this image; you handled the exposure perfectly. While I appreciate the other crop suggestions, I agree with Ofer on the original post composition being my preference. You know that I like a sense of habitat so including more of the perch does the trick there for me, and I think the OOF palm at lower left helps to add interest to that corner and keep things flowing.

So, congrats on a fine toucan image. It was great to work with you again!

Cheers,
Greg Basco

[Kiran Poonacha]

I will only say "WOW"