American Redstart on Crabapple

[Bryan Hix]

Taken this past spring in Ohio at Matthew Studebaker's workshop. This guy gave us quite the show and finally got into a position that I liked where he started calling. I just wish the tail were in focus and he was angle more toward the camera. Kept battling the low light and shutter speed.

Canon 1D Mk4
Canon 60mm f/4
ISO 640, 1/400 @ f/5.6, Eval +2/3, AvMode
LR 3.3, sharpen, de-sat reds, grad filter applied

[MohsenVahedipour]

Excellent singing pose, Very nice setup & sweet BG. TFS

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Wonderful setting . The Clean BG , the lovely colours of the flowers . Am fine with the HA , but agree with your self crique on the tail . I guess , it is the 600mm and not a 60mm as mentioned .

[Ofer Levy]

You did a great job with the low light! Great pose, perch and BG. Can you please explain how did you use the 'grad filter' ?
Cheers,

[Jim Crosswell]

Great image Bryan! I like the calling pose, perch and clean BG. I wish the twig below the bird wasn't broken and the pruned twig behind the bird near the edge of the frame was cloned out. Still a beauty as presented. Here is a quick repost showing the repairs.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely shot, afine pose and excellent detail for me it is just a tad to bright, lowering the highlights in curves just a tad enhances both contrast and detail.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Bryan, loved the pose and the perch. am fine with the HA. you needed lots of DOF for this due to the orientation of the perch....clearly difficult to get with that light. Was the tail in motion?

[Matthew Studebaker]

just beautiful Bryan. I really love this. great choice on the grad filter to make the background more dynamic and help lead the eye upwards, giving the subject more hierarchy. Fantastic processing with nice clean background and sharp details. I love the pose and colors here. I do like that snapped branch cloned like Jim suggested. Lovely image!

[Dan Busby]

Beautiful image Bryan. Some improvements already mentioned and posted. For some reason I don't mind that a singing bird is aimed away as long as the eye is clear and visible. I love the mouth whiskers but also wish the tail was in focus.

[Arthur Morris]

Was this a tape job?

[Bryan Hix]

Hi Artie,

I assume you are referring to an electronic call? If so, yes I apologize I should have specified that in the original post. We set a speaker up below the perch and he came in to investigate. Matthew does a great job of using just the right amount of calling to keep the bird interested to get some good shots. Then, we worked other species we heard calling nearby. Thanks Jim for the clone advice/example, I will have to fix that. Also, to answer the tail movement, yes he was moving it quite a bit so that didn't help with the blur. Ofer, as far as graduated filter in LR, I used -1/3 stop exposure and applied it from the bottom right toward the top left to give a little more contrast to the uniform green BG. I like how it turned out.

[arash_hazeghi]

Very nice calling pose and a good setup

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Artie,

I assume you are referring to an electronic call? If so, yes I apologize I should have specified that in the original post. We set a speaker up below the perch and he came in to investigate. Matthew does a great job of using just the right amount of calling to keep the bird interested to get some good shots. Then, we worked other species we heard calling nearby. Thanks Jim for the clone advice/example, I will have to fix that. Also, to answer the tail movement, yes he was moving it quite a bit so that didn't help with the blur. Ofer, as far as graduated filter in LR, I used -1/3 stop exposure and applied it from the bottom right toward the top left to give a little more contrast to the uniform green BG. I like how it turned out.

Thanks Bryan. As for the image, it is loverly. It is unfortunate that the bird is a ratty first year bird rather than a stunningly black-headed, orange marked individual. You however did quite well but for the several stubs of branches.