Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
this was shot in the early morning sometime in 2016. I was just catching the early morning sun rises and hit my perch set up in my side yard. The sun had just hit the bird and some of the greenery on the right side of the image. hopefully, the image is not too bright on the plumage
Specific Feedback
anything that will help me as a photographer improve my skills
Technical Details
iso 500, f10, 600mm, 200th, D800E
Hi David. I’d say the plumage could be dialed back just a bit. I’m not sure how you’re editing these days, but I’d select the bird using the Object selection tool in LR and pull back both the highlights and the texture sliders a bit. the angle of the light really brought out the relatively coarse texture of this bird’s feathers, so I’d try to soften that a bit as mentioned above. The lichen in the lower left appears to have gotten caught in the shade which has shifted the tint significantly toward the blue end. I don’t know if the selection tools are good enough to get it, but if so, it might not hurt to warm it up a touch. A very nice catch as these don’t hold still for any lengthof time at all.
A nice catch! I think backing off saturation will help with the vegetation, helping to balance out the bright moss and shaded lichen. A Hue-Sat layer , further reducing yellows, will pull down the moss a bit more, And then reducing cyan and green a bit and maybe pushing their sliders more to yellow will further warm the lichen. Easy slider moves but better to go back to the original raw.
Nice pose you got, David, and the perch has a lot of interest. I like how the light falls on the subjects. I had similar thoughts as Dennis and Diane. I played around with this in PS and I felt a hue/sat. layer backing off all the cyan and some green helped. The lichen looked more natural and removed the cyan from the leg, beak, and branch.
My first reaction was that the bird and lichen were a little to crispy. Agree with the comments made by others.
Nice catch David. Nice pose and really great to catch the bird between the outgrowths. Agree with comments above. I like Diane’s rework.
