Another image from our trip to South Africa. This guy just sat there posing for me. Since I’m not normally an avian shooter, I appreciated his patience.
All comments are welcome, especially any to improve as an avian shooter.
This is about 50% crop. I used Topaz Studio Detail to sharpen.
D850, ISO 1600, 150-600 at 440, f6.3, 1/1000
Excellent color, detail, and pattern on the bird. Ithink I would try to decenter the bird a bit. Your choice of the vertical crop was a good decision.
Steve, this is an excellent composition indeed. The placement of the bird would work if the bird has turned just a few more degrees towards us. But otherwise, I agree with David that you probably need a sliver more on the left. Maybe something like a 5:7 aspect ratio or even a 3:4. The ring around its eye is a little hot so if the RAW is not blown out, I think you can tame the highlights there easily. I would also try to apply some noise reduction in the BG to remove the majority of the grains. Looking forward to seeing more from the trip!
Very cool image, Steve. Nice to see you posting something in Avian. I like your composition and you caught a great pose. I think you could stand to run a bit of noise reduction on this, especially the background.
I’ll have to look for your posts in Wildlife.
Thanks for the comments! Dennis, I’m definitely not experienced in the art of avian. I enjoyed the process but I’ve got a lot to learn.
Here is a bit of enhancement. I started from the original and re-cropped (not sure that’s a word) to give more room on the left. I also ran a bit of noise reduction, though the background still has some grain.
I do prefer the repost, Steve. Sometimes in these avian images, particularly with finely divided vegetation like this or grasses you end up with a “crinkled” or “crunchy” look to the background. I usually separate the bird and perch from the background and just brush the background with a bit of blur in those cases. It works pretty well. In this case, I think the noise reduction took care of most of it and I don’t find what’s left to be distracting.
Cool species well captured. Repost is definitely an improvement and I learned one option in how to deal with crunchy backgrounds.
