I shot this last spring in Costa Rica. I waited 2 hours for this bird to come out of its nest. Unfortunately it was sunny and backlit thus strobe was necessary. I think my adjustments to the background look too contrived. What do you do with a messy white backlit subject?
Hi Susan. Wow what a fantastic subject and background. It looks like this is either a large crop or you had to apply some strong noise reduction. It also looks like the critical focal plane is on the perch in front of the bird. I think this is a case where more background environment could really be pleasing as the subject is very tight vertically and centered in the frame. The tail being clipped is unfortunate. It would help to know what type of processing you did on the background as I really like how it looks, it does not appear contrived to me.
Larry gave you a thorough critique, so not much more left for me to say. I would ask, whenever possible, to include your techs to help evaluate better.
If you had a zoom lens, it would have been better to go wider, specially to give more space on top and not clip the tail
Hi Susan -
Lovely pose. Having tried for the same shot in CR - understand your problem. You can have an incredible dynamic range from near darkness to blinding light in the same photo in cloud forests.
Part of the problem is also what USM sharpening in RBG mode does to the colors in quetzal's feathers. Recently worked on a similar photo of a quetzal with Robert O'toole at one of his workshops. Sharpening in Lab or Luminosity mode instead of RBG mode helped get better results for the bird.
Using layers and masking helped with highlight issues in the background. You have to construct 3 separate layers - one for the bird, one for bringing out details in darker colors in BG and a 3rd recovering details in HL's in BG. Then using HDR techniques or selective masking cretae your composite final image.
It's a lot of work to get a final great image.
Enjoyed the photo
Congratulations on that great article. The description of your pursuit of the quetzal provided an appreciation of the difficulties involved as well as your dedicated persistence. Best of luck to you.
I feel for you. Almost every single quetzal shot I got in Costa Rica suffered from a poor background. Recently I took some time to learn advanced masking in Photoshop, and was able to get some great results with my quetzal photo. I'll post that photo for you to examine; look for it in a new thread. Glenn's article on the quest for the quetzal is an entertaining read and really does an excellent job of describing the trials and tribulations of quetzal photography.
Actually this is not a crop. I had the 500 mm lens on and I couldn't back up any further without digging into the mountain behind me. That is why his tail is clipped.
Resplendent Quetzal
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote