White-necked Jacobin

[Hany Aziz]

First post here. This is from a birding trip to Costa Rica this January; I decided to stay an extra 3 days and add some bird photography.



Technical details:
Olympus 300 mm f2.8 lens with 1.4x TC
Olympus E620
1/180 sec at f5.6
Flash with Better Beamer.
No cropping or post-processing performed (other than resizing and colorspace change to sRGB for the web).

Critique, advice and feedback welcome.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

Hany.

[denise ippolito]

Hany, Glad you decided to post!! No image coming up:)

[Hany Aziz]

Funny. I am able to see the image here even when logged off from Zenfolio. Will try to edit original post and insert image directly from my HD. Are there forum guidelines for posted image size?

Thanks.

Sincerely,

Hany.

[denise ippolito]

Hany, Here are the Posting Guideline: Please submit only one image per post. Image size is to be no larger than 1024 pixels on the horizontal or 800 pixels on the vertical side. File size is not to exceed 200 kb.

[Jim Buescher]

Hany, The image size you are attaching from Zenfolio is probably protected. Go to the access control panel > edit > image protection > check to make sure that size is allowed for downloading.

[Doug Brown]

I have no problem seeing the image on my computer. Not sure what's going on here. White-Necked Jacobin males are stunning hummers! I like the pose of this one, and your sharpness is quite good. Your whites look a little gray as presented; you might trying pushing your exposure a little further to the right. From a composition standpoint, I find the bird a little too centered in the frame; I would crop from the top and left. I would also consider removing the OOF branch behind the bird (moving slightly to your left when you took the photo may have helped), and also the plant parts on the right edge of the frame. Congrats on your first image post on Avian!

[Hany Aziz]

I have no problem seeing the image on my computer. Not sure what's going on here. White-Necked Jacobin males are stunning hummers! I like the pose of this one, and your sharpness is quite good. Your whites look a little gray as presented; you might trying pushing your exposure a little further to the right. From a composition standpoint, I find the bird a little too centered in the frame; I would crop from the top and left. I would also consider removing the OOF branch behind the bird (moving slightly to your left when you took the photo may have helped), and also the plant parts on the right edge of the frame. Congrats on your first image post on Avian!

Thanks. I did edit the post and the image is now a direct upload to BPN rather than a link pointing to a private gallery on Zenfolio. I initially got fooled since I could still see the images on my machine even after logging off zenfolio and reloading this thread.

[denise ippolito]

Hany, Your image is up now. Big welcome to Avian. I agree w/ Doug regarding the composition. It seems a bit centered in the frame. I also like his suggestion to bring the exposure up just a little. Very nice sharp details and a lovely pose.:)

[Rod Warnock]

Welcome Hany !! Like the feather detail and definition. Agree with Doug Brown on cloning and also feel the bird is a little central. What a brilliant bird !!
Thanks for showing
Best regards
Rod Warnock

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Hany, Hany joined us for part of the JBWR/Nickerson Beach IPT. All good suggestions above. In helping out here, I learned a wonderful new trick. I tried to lighten the dark blue head using curves and yuckied it up badly.... So I went to Selective Color and took away 60 points of BLACK from the BLUES. Whoohoo! Then I used a new technique that Denise taught me, "Painting on the Effect" to further lighten the BLUEs without lightening the entire image. Plus the suggested crop.

[Arthur Morris]

Let's see if I have this animated GIF stuff down pat....