Virginia Rail

[P-A. Fortin]

Not the cleanest background nor the perfect eye contact, but this is as good as this bird would give. It definitely had no plan of coming out in the open. I actually had to clone out a branch in the upper back area. Still I think it is not a bad shot for my first encounter with such an elusive bird.

Canon 7D, 400mm f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/1000, 580 Ex II with Better Beamer at -1 1/3. No crop, NR and sharpening in PS. Worked from a JPG image

[Jeff Cashdollar]

PA,

Just curious, did you need the BB here what was your distance to the subject. The image looks a little pale this could be over flash remember the BB adds about +2 stops of flash and is used at distance where the regular flash unit could not provide fill or replacement light. If the light was low you could have increased the ISO as well to 400 capturing more light on the sensor. I like the subject, do not see many thanks for sharing - but the noisy background. lack of color punch and steep angle are opportunities for improvement.

Keep em coming PA!!

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi P-A., good job to get a capture of this bird! I know how difficult it is to even see one of these. It seems to me that they never present a good opportunity as far as background goes, so I think you did very well with what you had in front of you. I would definitely tone down those reeds in the background. You can do this with the adjustment brush in LR or the burn tool in PS. For my eye, the most distracting element is the OOF foreground area in the lower right corner. I love the water drop.

[Joel Eade]

You got great color and sharpness on the bird, a beauty. Agree with toning down the reeds in the BG. I might also remove the specular highlights on the bill. Well done.

[P-A. Fortin]

Thanks for the comments to all of you.

Just curious, did you need the BB here what was your distance to the subject. The image looks a little pale this could be over flash remember the BB adds about +2 stops of flash and is used at distance where the regular flash unit could not provide fill or replacement light. If the light was low you could have increased the ISO as well to 400 capturing more light on the sensor.

BB was definitely not needed here. Distance to subject was somewhere in the range of 15-20 feet. But it all happened so fast that I did not even have time to think about making any changes to my settings, even less to remove the BB or even turn off the flash. I was watching a green heron some meters away, hoping that it would move toward my position when the rail popped out of nowhere. I think the whole thing lasted for less than 3 seconds (these birds do run fast!).

Any advice on how I could somehow "fix" this? I played a bit with saturation but the results have a rather artificial look that I don't like much.

Hi P-A., good job to get a capture of this bird! I know how difficult it is to even see one of these. It seems to me that they never present a good opportunity as far as background goes, so I think you did very well with what you had in front of you. I would definitely tone down those reeds in the background. You can do this with the adjustment brush in LR or the burn tool in PS. For my eye, the most distracting element is the OOF foreground area in the lower right corner. I love the water drop.

I was impressed by how the bird moves among the reeds. It moves like a snake around the reeds without even touching those. Looking for movement to figure out where the bird is does not work at all!

About adjusting with the burn tool, do you use a selection or a feathered brush? My few experiments so far lead to results that showed an obvious transition between the adjusted area and the rest of the image. It could be that my adjustments were too aggressive though.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

PA - I appreciate your honesty and I know what you mean about being in the moment. I plan to post more images utilizing the BB and talk about its pros and cons. Do you own a copy of digital basics - there are some great sections on using curves, levels and selective color to make adjustments. I am a big believer in post processing but usually do not spend more than 10 - 15 minutes on image. This image is interesting and shows a beautiful bird in natural habitat. Remember every photo tells a story and photoshop does not always make it more interesting. I like your comments about how fast they run and the crazy moment when it all went down. Stay with this species and keep at it, plan and hang in there - better pictures of this guy are coming.

[P-A. Fortin]

Yes. Digital basics was one of my first acquisitions after both "art of bird photography" books. I think I have a decent understanding of the techniques described there. What I definitely lack is the eye to look at an image and figure out "okay, this image lacks this and to improve it, I need to apply that". Like I have a hammer but have no clue about what is a nail. I guess it is that thing they call experience

Looking forward to your posts about flash and BB. It is another tool that I feel I am not using correctly, nor to its full potential.