Hoopoe and Repost

Upupa epops is seen in late winter on our local farmland, piercing the ground to catch grubs. It is best caught with raised crest (for just a moment) on landing. I wanted to get this backlit to emphasise that crest.

Specific Feedback Requested

I lightened the body a bit with a selection in PS, but I’m not sure this was necessary in the end.
All comments welcome.

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
D7100 + 200-500 @ 500mm; f8, 1/800, ISO 500 - car window support.

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Superb detail in the first shot, Mike. The second isn’t enlarging for me. In the first shot, I love the back lit crest-it’s superb. The shadows in that image seem bluer than I would expect or than seems really natural-you might work on bringing that tint down.

Thanks @Dennis_Plank - I’ve dialled down those blues which were definitely not supposed to be there! However, in editing the first photo (I just deleted the old line of code and uploaded the revised image) I seem to have made this image also unenlargeable, so sorry about that.

Nice shots, Mike! What amazing looking birds! They look like they have funny personalities! Great capture of the details and lighting!

Hi Mike, I have never seen this bird before, so I don’t know what the colors are supposed to be, but I wanted to practice some edits and share an example of a different look. I brightened the lower body and added a little vignette and lowered the blues and cropped a bit - maybe all overdone, but I am learning as I go.

Thanks, Ben. I do like the brightening of the bird - it stands out better now. I’m not a big fan of vignettes; but the crop - especially at the bottom - is also interesting. I’m curious, which method did you use for brightening the bird?

Hi,
Both images are very nice. I am seeing some artifacts along the top edge of the bill in the first image. Most likely caused by aggressive sharpening . Halos which are often produced after sharpening can be removed in photoshop with a layer set to darken and then you can use the rubber stamp tool which will fill in the halo. The colors in your version are natural…Jim

Hi Mike, Love the backlighting of the crest and slightly open beak. A really interesting looking bird. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for spotting that, Jim.

Hi Jim, to ‘brighten’ I raised the exposure, contrast, and highlights very slightly and brushed it with a local mask over the body of the bird. Other than that I pulled down the blues globally with HSL that you also said later were not supposed to be there.

Here it is again without the vignette


The ground appears to have some odd areas sharp and some blurred and some more orange.

Thanks for sharing the photo of a bird that I have never seen before - where do these birds live?

A really cool bird, Mike! Well captured. I like the rework by @BenM, but maybe not that tightly cropped at the bottom. Instead of cropping away all of the out-of-focus stone in the LLC, it could partly be cropped, and partly erased.

Really interesting looking birds Mike and good idea to get that crest backlit. Looks great with lots of detail. I am with Jim that the colors of the bird look more natural with the original post. I like the lightening up that Ben did.

Here’s a repost of the hoopoe lightened, de-haloed and slightly cropped. Thanks for your suggestions. This hoopoe was in S. Korea, Ben, but they are found all over Eurasia and Africa.

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You also did a good job toning down the blues in the shadows, Mike. Well done.

[quote=“Mike_Friel, post:3, topic:20263”]

Thanks - I’ve dialled down those blues which were definitely not supposed to be there! However, in editing the first photo (I just deleted the old line of code and uploaded the revised image) I seem to have made this image also unenlargeable, so sorry about that.


[/quote]I’ve removed the second hoopoe as it was causing me some loading problems …