This late spring I was walking in Stewart Park located at the end of Cayuga lake in Ithaca. I was looking for anything to photograph. I walked by a Martin birdhouse and it was full of Purple Martins flying in and out. As I watched, I could determine that there were likely eggs in their nests. The nests were rarely left alone. Either the male or female remained on the perch until their mate returned before they ventured out. Now and then the Martin left on guard would peek in the nest door to make sure all was well. I spent some time trying to get photos of them leaving or entering their nest. They are fast birds and a challenge to get in full focus in flight. The sky was very bright and I had to drop the exposure enough to not blow it out which made the birds dark in camera. I couldn’t tell by looking in the view finder how sharp my images were, so it was a very pleasant surprise when I brought the exposure & shadows up in Photoshop on this image. The black Martin is the adult male and the landing Martin is female.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any welcomed
Technical Details
Sony aR7 iv with a 200 mm-600 mm taken at 300 mm
f/5.6
s/1/2000
ISO/640
ACR/Photoshop Cleanup and color corrections
Topaz DeNoise/Sharpen
Topaz Studio 2 one LOOK to add feather definition
1 Like
Hi Donna:
Cool interaction image. I especially like the position and action from the female.
My overall reaction to the processing is that the image is a bit on the flat side. I’ve never understood the idea of adjusting exposure to get the sky when the subject is the bird and if that isn’t right, nothing else really matters. Sure adjusting exposure on the birds in post is an option, but is never great for the overall quality.
I did a little processing to see if I thought more could be had even from the jpeg.
More light on the female, a bit of work on the male and let the sky go brighter.
See what you think.
That looks great, Keith. Let’s say we had a BG with beautiful bright clouds and you expose for the birds. That makes the BG almost pure white or say it blows out some of the clouds. Do you just process the BG best you can and let it be? This was shot around 2:00 pm on a very bright glary day. Sorry, I’ve only been taking bird photos for about a year. I guess I don’t know what to do with very bright skies. I didn’t realize I would be losing a lot of quality when I darkened the birds. I have a good mirrorless full frame camera and thought they were good at bringing back shadows. I keep hearing ETR so I adjust my histogram so the whites aren’t off the edge and on bright skies that usually makes the subjects dark. I exposure blend on stationary images and waterfalls if I need to. Thanks for any suggestions.
Hi @Donna_Callais
My philosophy is that if I’m trying to take a picture of any subject, then the most important thing to get right is the exposure on that subject. If that causes the background to be under or over exposed, then it just is. I didn’t point the camera to get the background exposure optimized.
In your example when you talk about ETR, you are using a theory that is technically correct that there is more information captured by using this thought, but think for a second about what is the brightest thing in this image. You aren’t using ETR on the birds, you are using ETR on the sky and there isn’t any detail there anyway. Anytime there is a darker subject against a brighter background you have to use positive exposure compensation to get the subject exposed correctly.
So to your question. If the subject was a very dark bird (bald eagle, dark morph hawk, etc.) then yes I’d get it right and let the clouds do whatever they do.
You really made the birds brighter in post, not darker. Anytime you have to raise the exposure you are going to loose detail and contrast and increase any noise that is present. It is all a relative amount so a little amount is no big deal, a large amount could be a very big deal.
Technology is great and bringing back shadow details has improved a lot in the last few years. But… there isn’t a camera on the market that can produce the same result in post by increasing shadows as getting them right in the camera in the first place.
A very good image, Donna. In this case, I would probably handle exposure in one of two ways. Either set the exposure off the female or off the white nest box. I find in bright sunshine that if I expose something white so it’s showing slightly blown out on the histogram, the other tones will be very close to what they should be and it is very rare when anything is actually blown out even though it may look that way in camera. Remember that your camera is actually indicating the values for a jpg conversion of your image, so it shows blown far before it actually is. The female makes a good alternative in this case, since you mentioned that it would perch on the porch, so there was enough time to check the exposure on it.
You caught a nice landing pose and the eye contact between the two is great. I agree with Keith about letting the sky do what it will and concentrate on the bird, but I played around with your image in PS and using the raw filter, decreasing the highlights and temperature brought out some blue sky which seemed to make the female stand out more. It depends, though, how much you want to manipulate your image.
@Keith_Bauer @Dennis_Plank @Allen_Brooks Thanks to all of you for giving me great advice on setting my camera exposure for taking photos of birds in fight with the sky as a BG. I will certainly follow this advice the next time out. I also want to do a rework on my image to see if I can get more contrast. Thanks again for taking time out of your day to help me.
@Keith_Anderson Bauer @Dennis Plank @Allen Brooks
I uploaded a repost. I pretty much started over with this image. I also began to think there was a little too much yellow in the Martin on the first post, so I took a little out. Thanks for making me work harder on this photo.
Good job on the repost. I like the blue in the sky and the martin shows up better and you have some nice detail as well.
I like the repost, Donna. I think you’d get a less painterly look if you exposed for the birds instead of the sky, but this works quite as well for me.
