Black Redstart

[Richard Stern]

An image from my recent trip to Extremedura, Spain. Photographed from above, cropped, selectively sharpened. Whites darkened and darks lightened slightly. Noise reduction applied to bg. Comments on the pose, or anything else, welcome.

D7000, 300 f/4 AF-S + 1.4TC, hand-held, 1/2500, f/5.6, ISO320.

Thanks,

Richard

[Ofer Levy]

Setting is lovely and this bird is stunning. However, IQ is not great due to what looks like a significant crop.

[Karl Egressy]

Pose, background exposure, all look great. I find that the beak is out of the plane of main focus. Maybe some extra sharpening to the beak would help.

[Arthur Morris]

A new bird for me. I like the perspective. Not sure if the darks of the head are funky as I do not know this species.

Did you add the eye highlight?

[Richard Stern]

Hi,

I didn't really touch the darks on the head, and the paler patch is real. And yes, I added the eye highlight - hope it looks OK!

Thanks,

Richard

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Richard for the head info. If I knew that you added it then it did not look natural. And I knew. :). That's why I asked. \

Best to work very large and use a tiny brush when creating them....

[Richard Stern]

Hi again,

I did work large, and used a soft-edged brush at 2 pixels, a single dab and white as the color. I seem to remember a tutorial somewhere in the forum on adding eye highlights - any further info. would be very helpful!

Thanks,

Richard

[Arthur Morris]

I'd go with a 1 pixel brush at at least 50% hardness. The trick is that natural highlights are always jagged never round. Get in the habit of studying the natural highlights at high magnification so that you get to know the shapes....

Check out the highlight that I added on my recent Piping Plover chick post....

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Richard, nice bird and BG. agree that IQ could have been bigger. If this is a large crop, then you might want to do less cropping....if your BG is so nice, it should look good with the bird a bit smaller in the frame.

Yes, to reworking the catchlight. With the sun angle that you have, the position of the catchlight does not look appropriate. It'd have to be a little higher and to the right.