"Yosemite Sam" Costa's hummingbird
Spent the weekend in the desert with friends who had hummingbird feeders all along their patio. This Costa's was dubbed "Yosemite Sam" by my wife for his gorget "moustache". He was also incredibly active and territorial, chasing every hummer away from the 6 or 7 feeders along the patio anytime he saw another hummingbird feeding.
40D + 300L f/4 + 1.4x; ISO 500 , f5.6, 1/160; heavy crop.
Good capture. Nice lighting, is this on an overcast day? I *might* crop off some of the green BG above as it *may* be a bit too much headroom.
Chris: it was taken before 8 am with overcast skies.
I probably would have cropped more off the top, but I've too often ended up with a square crop, so I tried to keep it vertical this time.
This is a beautiful image - great colors and lighting. I would crop a bit off the bottom too. (not too much though)
Nancy
Allen
Hope you don't mind that I cropped it and took out a couple of the branches.
Bill
So what is that background. Beautiful capture of a bird I have never seen before!
A beautiful image. I like your second crop much better it helps really focus on the subject. In a perfect world, I would like to have had the camera a couple of degrees further to your left to loose the second eye which is just visible.
Jon Saperia
Colors and detail on the bird are very nice and I like the perch, even the oof part.
I'm not crazy about the BG color and brightness, I might try to tone it down a little?
I like williams Crop.
Peter
Beautiful brilliant colors. William's crop and pruning help the image. Throat is very sharp. If this is a large crop I'm surprised there wasn't a little more dof on the bird, or maybe it's SS that worked against you. In any event it's a lovely image.
The fairway of a golf course beyond the patio.Originally Posted by Cody Covey
Bill: I like the crop.
Allen, nice capture of a pretty bird. It works well with the bland golf-course in the BG. You managed to get the light just right on the gorget.
Allen, the first thing I noticed was the intense BG color. I opened the image in Camera Raw and you have really large spikes on both ends of your histograms. If you reopen your image and recover the blown colors you'll have something that looks a bit more realistic - and a bit underexposed in places.
I'd still rework the green so it wasn't quite so yellow and lighten up the image a bit but controlling the brightness as you go. There's nothing wrong with a vibrantly colored image but that green is so overpowering and so unrealistic that I think it actually detracts a bit from the bird's beauty.
Outstanding details on the head and breast of the bird but you lose the tail details and the OOF twigs are definitely getting in the way of our seeing this bird's full potential. Still, I probably would have taken the image also because this is one beautiful bird!
Thanks, Julie, and everyone else for commenting.
Here's a re-worked, re-cropped version based on comments above (and especially toning down the green):
Beatiful and much more realistic!
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