Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I was photographing hummingbirds early this morning and saw this one.
Specific Feedback
Black and white is obviously an odd choice. Too odd?
Technical Details
ISO 20,000, 560mm, f/8, 1/2000th sec.
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B&W is certainly different, Don, but not a bad choice for a female or juvenile which aren’t all that colorful. Obviously not as helpful for ID purposes, but that’s not the point of your image. Composition and detail in the bird and flowers are excellent and I think the monochrome helps tame what looks to be a rather busy background. If you took this in color originally, I could see having fun with some selective color-perhaps in the bird and the immediate cluster of flowers it’s working on.
Thanks, Dennis. I think it was the distracting bright color of the flowers that made me consider black and white.
ISO ??? Works great in B&W… Love the wings and the tone !!! What did you do to ease the noise. Maybe vignette a little. Maybe not. Really good Don. Blown away on how you capture this image.
The ISO was 20,000, Gill. I used the enhance feature in Lightroom to reduce the noise but there’s still some there.
Amazing. I tried Denoise but it was so slow. I’m working on the noise in some of my images. Looks like you have it under control.
Really nice pose Don. Love the extended forward wings. I can see how the black and white would minimize the distractions in the image. Nicely done.
The hummingbird is beautifully captured. The B&W processing gives it an artsy feel and really directs the attention at the bird and serves to pretty much eliminate the background. I like Dennis’s idea of playing around with selective color.
Allen and Allen, thanks for the feedback.
Hi Don
Don’t love the fact that you can photograph something with an ISO of 20,000 and come out with a clean photograph. Nice work.
Peter
Peter, it’s amazing, isn’t it? When I started, any shot using an ISO over 800 was destined for the junk pile.
Don,
Definitely a fantastic capture of the hummer. Yeah, I think most would expect a color rendition, but completely understand your choice. And I think you were rewarded well with that choice.
The only suggestion I have would be to shave off a little on the right. The bird is feeding off the one up top and so the ones on the right are less important. And I only really thought of that because you mentioned the b&w conversion, in part, was because of the color/brightness of the flowers on the right?
Well done!