Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
While deleting junk photos from my hard drives, I discovered this shot taken last December. The head was in shadow while the rest of the bird was brightly lit by the winter sun. I brightened up the shadows within reason and it appears OK.
Specific Feedback
How would you have handled the edits on the shadows?
Technical Details
Z9 600mm f4 (1/2000 sec at f8.0, ISO=800, fill at -1.3ev), DeNoise, Crop for comp, Levels, Shadows & Highlights, Brightness & Contrast, Rubber Stamp tool to clone out OOF branches at top of frame…Jim
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Vision and Purpose:
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Very cute pose, Jim. The detail appears excellent. Perch and background are good. Your processing looks good.
Hi Jim. This looks pretty good as posted. Our Camera club had a presentation by Ray Hennessey(sp?) last month on editing in LR and one of the things he showed was the use of intersecting masks which I didn’t know about. I think it would be ideal in this image to intersect a selection of the bird and maybe the perch with a radial gradient to raise the shadows. I haven’t had an opportunity to play with it yet, but he was doing live demos and it worked like magic in similar situations to create very subtle and realistic transitions.
Gorgeous, with your usual artistry and technical quality! I love the BG! I think the shadows could have come up even more – I see nothing suspicious about them. The complexity of the perch in the UL corner pulls my eye a bit – I wonder about some cropping from the top and-or left…
Hi Jim, processing looks good to me. I think you handled the uneven light well. Love seeing the red cap of the male so well. My eye is drawn to the dark area in the lower left but it’s not a big deal.
This really is a downy little woodpecker. His head looks very cute. I think you’ve done a great job of lifting the shadow on his head. (I would have done that with masking in ACR by selecting the subject and raising the shadows, then using the brush to subtract what didn’t need lifting. Using the colour range may have also worked?)
Love the background and perch.
Nice prossessing with good color and detail. The lighting is nice.
