Name: IMG_3002-BPN.jpg Views: 85 Size: 380.1 KB
Another bird many of you probably haven't seen. This is very typical behaviour of these tiny birds, dangling from foliage looking for an insect or often a spider. This one has found some webs in the dead leaves. Note the wing blur (which probably breaks a few rules but I like it) - I think the bird was about to take off but I took this more than 3 years ago and honestly can't remember the situation at the time. I have toned down the OOF dead leaves on the left, reduced highlights on the bird and added mid-tone contrast there. Unfortunately, there is no frame left on the right otherwise I would have done a different crop. I really love these little birds in spite of their speed and difficulty as photographic subjects. I'd love to get one hovering which they commonly do when foraging but not managed that yet and they've already disappeared for another year. Crop is about three quarters of the frame area.

Thanks for taking a look and any comments you are kind enough to provide.

Technical: Canon 700D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM (original version) at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/320 sec, f6.3, ISO 800. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR applied to bird and stronger to background. Sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur: 0.4 pixels at 50%) after final size reduction.