I was looking for desert images for the weekly challenge and came across this image that I’d never processed. At the time, I don’t think I’d even ID’d it since this was toward the end of a six week photo excursion and wasn’t one of my main stops.
I was near Portal, Arizona and stopped at the Southwest Research Station in the Chiricahua Mountains to try to photograph hummingbirds. I was leaving when I spotted this bird.
Specific Feedback Requested
Anything. This image is pretty minimally processed. Just noise reduction, crop, and micro-contrast enhancement of the bird with a few minor adjustments to the face at the end.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 600 mm, hand held, f/8, 1/3200, iso 800, aperture priority with no compensation. Processed in LR and PS CC. Cropped to 4272x3294. Taken April 20, 2017 at 9:54 am (could be wrong as I’m horrible about time zones).
You got a nice catch here – good pose, perch and setting. I think it would stand up to a slightly closer crop to eliminate the more OOF area along the bottom and the narrowing of the perch there, which pulls the eye a bit. I’d be tempted to lose or lighten the darker area along the left edge as well.
Dennis, a very good catch. A nice pose. I am not a bird photographer, so I don´t know what is comme il faut but I really like the structure and color of the background, and also that the direction of the lines of the background line up with the stick
Dennis: I like this very much. A nice example of having the background really add to the image. The implied diagonals in the background are complimentary to the perch. Nice.
I might look at a small crop at the bottom just to remove the slightly different part of the perch, but not a big deal either way.
Dennis; what caught my eyes is the diagonal lines of the OOF background which really help to set the little bird off very nicely. Also like how its head is positioned and of course diagonal position of the perch couldn’t have worked out better. Nice catch.
Thanks for the input. It’s interesting since I had two frames essentially identical except the other didn’t include the base of the seed head. I elected to go with the posted version because I thought it would work better if it were obvious that it were a seed head. Anyhow, where’s a repost with the bottom cropped up a bit and some cloning to cover up that dark area on the left.
Dennis, I think I like the repost best too. That dark on the left was a bit of a distraction as mentioned. I am so glad that you found this one and posted it though. I really love the colors of this bird, and how you presented him in his environment. The head turn was a nice plus as well. Great shot.
I see your point about the importance of the base of the head. I’d be tempted to just clone over the pinkish blur, with repeated but slightly separated brush strokes at maybe 50% opacity. And it’s really nitpicking, but I would remove the dark area on the right with more subtle partial opacity cloning.
