While her mate might be more striking in appearance, this female was a little more acrobatic in her quest to hoover up the bugs on the underside of this branch. She wasn’t far from him, but in a little more shaded area so the ISO went up a bit and I increased my shutter speed as well to catch her antics. Since I’m going to be gone for a few days without my laptop, I will put the series here. Hope she makes you smile as much as she does me.
Oh and check out that one white tail feather. Funny.
Handheld with elbows on deck railing, bad for the neck, but good for a bit of stabilization.
RAW processing in Lr to even tonalities and bump saturation, texture and sharpness in the bird. Used masking to select subject and increase exposure on her, inverted the mask to reduce noise in bg. Topaz sharpen to bring up details. Photoshop to remove distractions, but with her, I needed to do this far less since that background was so clear and in the distance. She’s even got a bit of sky.
A very good series, Kris. My favorite is the second image with the eyes on either side of the twig. In the first image, I find the vertical element on the left distracting, though with the pose of the bird in the third, it works fine. I think you could blend it in or clone it over completely without much difficulty.
I’ll see what I can do about that tree, Dennis, because that’s what it is. It didn’t occur to me that it could be a distraction, but maybe CAF can deal with it.
Very nice series of behavioral shots. Colors and detail look spot on. I do find my eye drawn a bit towards the sky, Would it be too tight to crop most of it out in the second shot?
Thanks @peter - I’ve gotten better at the cloning thing over time. The key is to break up silhouettes and patterns by using a variety of clone source material. Also varying the opacity of the brush helps to keep things from looking obviously duplicated.