Not sure if the perch is still to bright? 7D Sigma 150-600mmC@600mm, F8, 1/400, ISO 400, tripod, ground blind.
Hi David:
I like the position of the chipmunk, but yes, I do find the log to be bright and an eye catcher. I did a little work on the perch as well as a little on the chipmunk. See if you like this better.
Great perch and beautiful subject! Agree with Keith that perch was bright, look’s better in Keith’s post.
And I find little intruding tail a bit of distraction, either more of it or none of it, would be better,
I like this one as is–just my favorable bias towards chipmunks! I agree that the darkened perch does help the comp. Well done…Jim
Thanks for the revisions Keith. They do give it a little more pop and the perch does not pull the eye as much. Did you select the chipper and the perch and do a levels adjustment? When I process images, I normally adjust exposure on the histogram to the right, but in some cases that is to much.
David: Yes, I selected the perch and used a curve instead of a levels, but could have achieved a similar result with a levels. Then I selected the chipmunk and used a curve to add a bit of contrast via an s-curve.
Sounds like you are trying to push the histogram to the right, but if there are not any tones in the image that are truly white or very bright, you’ll push the luminance to far. Sounds like you’ve read about expose to the right? Yeah, that’s fine, but the histogram needs to represent the tones that are real, not pushed to the right just because.
I like this a lot David. While I’d be happy with the original, Keith’s reprocessed perch did seem to help.
Something that I watch for sometimes are distracting elements along the edges of a frame. In this case, I’d consider cropping slightly from the right… the edge of the perch is right up against that border, so even the little sliver of light background in between them can serve as a distraction and pull the viewer’s eye down and away from where you want it to go. Plus, a crop from right helps position this left-facing subject a bit more to the right, and that will aid the directionality of the pose.
Max
Really nice image. Chipmunks are a challenge to photograph well. Nice job and I like the repost as the perch and chipmunk have similar colors. Thanks for posting.