Raven

[wendell westfall]

D90 70-200VR+2X@400 1/400 f/5.6 ISO400 +2/3EV handheld

I was driving home two days ago when I spotted this bird in a tree beside the road;I thought it was a crow. I stopped, got the camera out of the trunk and captured two images before it flew away. The image is cropped a bit and two branches were removed, on the right and left lower corners. Is the bird "black enough" (enough contrast applied)? I believe it looked this color, but I expected it to be darker, richer. Perhaps my +2/3EV was wrong?

Wendell

[jack williamson]

I think that these birds are blacker. This looks like a young bird (short tail feathers) and that might be why

it is such a light color. It seems to be exposed correctly although +2/3 might have been a bit much.

Nice and sharp but the head angle is off just a bit.

Jack

[Joel Eade]

I agree with Jack, maybe not a matter of contrast but perhaps a levels adjustment or using 'selective color' you could adjust the blacks.

It looks like there is a little noise problem as well, probably from a large crop, so some judicious noise reduction might be helpful too.

It's a nice capture, around where I live if you stop your car these guys are gone, very difficult to get a close shot of them.

[Bob Miller]

Joel...I would go with Selective color and add some blacks. Also would like to see the claws sharper and possibly a difft hue of blue for the sky....2 smudges under branch {?}.........also the branch has some white spots you can clone out.
Nice image for a quick grab!

[annmpacheco]

Whoa bad hair day. Wow, do we have a hybrid or a juvenile? Let's ask John Chardine. Great capture.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Repost, I added some black, gray and adjusted the mid tones. The +2/3 was a tad too much IMO.

[wendell westfall]

Yep, Jeff, your re-post looks better. . .

[Kerry Perkins]

Wendell, you got a very interesting bird there. As you know, both crows and ravens are abundant in our part of the country but I have never seen one colored like this. I've searched everywhere and can't find any reference to this color, so I think it's a combination of over-exposure and a unique juvenile coloration. Sibley does say that juvis have gray at the base of their feathers, but the short tail is a new one on me. Interesting indeed...

There are two things that bother me about this image other than the exposure - the marks in the right side of the image and the way the perch is unnaturally cut off on the left end. What was your reasoning in not letting it just exit the frame?

[wendell westfall]

Kerry, I checked my original images again and all of them look very close to the raven in my post, so the color of the bird may have been somewhat adversely affected by the exposure (+2/3 may have been too much). But I do think the coloration of the bird is a pretty accurate representation of what I saw. As for the "two things that bother" the marks on the right are the result of a sloppy cloning effort to eliminate a branch; and as for the cut off in the left corner, I cloned out an out-of-focus branch that crossed the the remaining one, which I thought would improve my image. I see that the result was not crisp and that the "hazy" end of that remaining branch is not natural looking. Thanks for your careful attention to my post . . . it is appreciated . . .

[wendell westfall]

Kerry, here is my (untouched) raven image as it came out of the camera -- RAW to NEF via Lightroom3, then converted to JPG for this post. I think you'll agree the colors are pretty much as was my original post here.

Wendell