Open Wide! & Repost

Repost:

Image Description

Our swallows came back a week ago and then left in a spate of colder weather. Three of them made a brief appearance two mornings ago when it was foggy and I’ve always liked these birds in those conditions. This one opened nice and wide for three frames worth.

Type of Critique Requested

  • Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.

Repost: I adjusted the Blue and Aqua saturation and luminance sliders in LR to bring down the color cast a bit. I think this is a bit more realistic.

  • Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

I’m not sure about the horizontal composition, but a vertical didn’t seem to work at all. It looks to me as if the iridescent blue shifted a bit in the conversion to the srgb jpeg version.

Technical Details

Sony A1, FE 200-600 + 1.4 TC @ 840 mm, hand held, f/9, 1/640, iso 4000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 5809x4219. Taken March 23rd at 8:10 AM.

Very cool shot, Dennis. I love everything about it. The pose is nice. That’s what I call a wide open mouth. I wouldn’t want to be the recipient she/he is squawking at :grinning:. They’re probably just happy about spring and mating season. The colors on this swallow are gorgeous. We have barn swallows. The colors are beautiful if you can get a shot at the right angle and they don’t seat very long. I like the vertical shot and the solid background with just a tint of blue that blends in very well. Your framing with the blue line that matches the bird really adds to this image too. Great job!!

Dennis, this is wild. Love the action you caught here. And the landscape mode works just fine. I’m hoping the Swallows will be here soon too. There’s a refuge that puts out birdhouses about this time of year. Will have to go check it out this week.

Cheers,
David

Dennis, it looks like he is practicing for a visit to the dentist office! That is one wide open mouth. The colors on him is beautiful. I like his perch too. I can’t think of anything that would improve the shot.

Hi Dennis
I like the framing, feather detail and action of the Swallow. I think you could look at removing the blue cast in the frame opening up the exposer on the Swallow, it looks a little dark on my Mac. Nice work.
Peter.

Super catch with that screaming pose. Agree that there seems to be a cyan cast going on here and the blacks seem a bit thin on my monitor. I think the horizontal presentation works, but I wonder if it would be more effective flipped so that the bird is yelling to the right.