Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
These little guys are pretty fast I don’t sit still for very long. They’re quite agile. They move and feed in all different kinds of Positions. I wish there were more light on the face. This is best viewed large.
Specific Feedback
any
Technical Details
Iso-1250, 400+1.4 X, F8, 2000th, A1
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1 Like
Hi David, these guys are really fast as you mention so great you were able to get this image. Details are really fine and I see a hint of an eye catchlight so I’d call it good. Realistic colors are nice. Pleasing BG. Well done.
Lovely catch with a pleasing perch and very nice BG. I think you should back off the contrast and sharpening, though.
You don’t have an embedded profile so when I opened it in PS I chose to assume it is sRGB and then to convert to my working space, so I see an accurate histogram. The blacks aren’t blocked but they rise very steeply which gives the same appearance, and loses detail in the face, especially. You could go back to the raw file in LR and try pulling the Shadows slider to the right a bit to give a slower rise of the darks, then tweak the Blacks slider a bit left to just touch the edge of the histogram, if needed.
I’d bet this doesn’t need more than the microscopic sharpening of Topaz Denoise AI. Compare Low Light and Severe Noise (very arbitrary names) to see if either has the flaw of missing some areas, often strangely out in the middle of the BG.
To further bring out the face you could try a digital fill flash: paint a quick mask with a soft brush that doesn’t reach out into the BG, and let it mask a curves to lighten the mids a bit.
Diane, I found the photo in my Light room classic and here Are the settings that I appear to have used.
Highlights were at -16
Shadows were at +75
White Were at -9
Dehaze. Was set to +24
Vibrance was set to +10
I did not use the sharpening algorithm lens. Correction had checked, remove chromatic, aberration, and enable profile Corrections
From here the file was sent to Photoshop
Dodge tool was used to brighten up a few areas, especially in the blocks
There may have been some minor sharpening adjustments from Photoshop.
Perch was Selected And darkened
Image was cropped to about 25% of full frame
Subject with selected which included the Perch and I inverted the background and used a minor field blur just smooth things out.
I may have Used topaz adjust, the original version not the AI version. This was set to make the photo pop and what I think that basically does is increase the contrast a tiny bit. There were no other adjustments to contrast other than micro contrast.
Image was then transferred to become a JPEG via the TK nine which is set to convert to SRGB and high resolution JPEG.
Nothing else was done other than post
I did not use DXO
Was topaz I almost always set the sharpening as low as possible, and I don’t make too much use for the denoise
David
Dehaze is what pushed the contrast – I doubt there is ever any need to use it on a closeup bird portrait. Possibly also Topaz Adjust. I’d love to see the raw file reprocessed without those two steps.
I don’t know if exporting a JPEG with the TK thing will embed the color space, but that is always a good idea. (In addition to converting you need to embed.) Exporting from LR gives you an option to choose a color space and it will convert to that space for you.
