The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
A rare snow day in Memphis today. I went out and photographed some birds at the backyard setup. A brown thrasher surprisingly showed up as well as a male pine warbler. Attracted by peanuts and sunflower chips.
Specific Feedback
How does the snow look? I rarely photograph snow. I wanted to keep the texture and overall white look.
The BG of the pine warbler was in shade so has a grayish look.
Technical Details
Canon R7, Canon 200-800mm, tripod
ISO 1600, f10, 1/800s
Processed in DXO PureRaw 4 and Photoshop.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
Gorgeous, all!! I almost never have a chance to photograph snow, but it looks good to me. The exposure on the bottom two might be pushed up just a hair?? Should be possible to bring up the mids, so the whites don’t blow out.
Nice, Allen. We don’t get snow often, but I love to photograph in it when we do. The light is really special. You did a good job on the snow. I do think @Diane_Miller has a good idea on bringing up the mids a bit. Sometimes I’ll just bow up a curves adjustment and maybe even pull down the right end point a trifle. Keeping the texture is tricky.
Thanks @Diane_Miller and @Dennis_Plank , I tried boosting mid-tones on the bird a tad (posted above). I used NIK Viveza 7 and selected a control point on the primary wing and upped mid-tones about 20%. Not sure if that is what you meant. Difference is subtle but I’m afraid raising them more would lighten the wing feathers too much.
Allen, these are great! All look good to me. The snow has just enough texture, and teh bird’s colours just pop! From here, your midtones look fine, but Diane’s appear a little washed out.
Excellent catches!
Thanks Sandy, I looked at other pine warbler images and the wing whites seem gray washed at times and the body other than the bright yellow seemed to be a darker olive.
I appreciate Diane’s suggestion though. Can always be good to take a second look.
Snow is challenging due to its crunchy texture. I took the liberty of doing some edits to your excellent pine warbler photo. I did a curves adjustment to the midtones using TK’s Rapid Masking , flattened the image and then bumped up the microcontrast which enhanced the feather details and snow texture. The changes are subtle and the last step involved increasing the brightness and contrast slightly. One way of increasing snow detail is to use some fill flash which will brighten and bring out some of the highlights. Awesome series…Jim
Since other’s are chiming in on snow processing, while I haven’t tried it yet (no snow this winter) , I suspect using a local adjustment brush in LR and playing with the texture slider might work pretty well.
Thanks Jim. Looks good. All this have given me much to consider in photographing in a situation I rarely see (snow). I don’t have the TK applications so will have to do any tweaking in other apps.
I have more snow shots to post. We’ll see.
