Shot this guy this morning. These fellows have been singing and displaying for a couple weeks now. Feeling very springy around here.
Techs:
D850
700mm
ISO 640
1/5000
f/6.3
Shot was a little underexposed because I was shooting in aperture priority. Moved to manual after this burst, but I liked this pose better than my later shots. So, I bumped up the exposure a bit, but the blacks got washed out. In C1P, I just adjusted white balance and saturation slightly. In PS, I resized, sharpened, reduced noise on the BG, and dodged the blacks through a darks layer mask. I also cloned out a couple small branches. All feedback welcome.
I was trying to figure out what happened to the blacks facing you directly before I read your description, Lyle. They look like there should be more detail in them with the back and breast having such nice detail. It’s hard to tell if there’s an alternate processing method that might work better. I do like the pose a lot.
I really like the pose too, Lyle. Exposure and detail look pretty good. I think you could crop this very slightly from right and maybe a bit overall, but not much. These guys are very common around here, but I never get anything quite this nice.
This is a nice pose and background but I’d agree the blacks look flat. I never get tired of shooting these guys in the spring. They pretty much demand attention!
Thanks for the feedback on the blacks, @Dennis_Plank and @Terri_Barnett. Is this any better? Think I probably need to calibrate my monitor, been a while.
I think these guys are hard to photograph, but for me this is pretty good. Looks sharp and the epaulets came out great. I also like the green background contrasting with the red wing. The perch is nice as well.
It looks better, Lyle, but the side of the face still lacks detail and I’m puzzled as to why. It’s not too dark-that doesn’t seem to be the issue, but there’s just no feather texture showing. That part of the head may have been directly facing the light so it didn’t provide any shading to bring out texture-that’s the only thing I can think of.
Hi Lyle, very nice pose and I really like the large red patch you caught on the wing. Maybe I just don’t get it but at full size I see texture in the blacks. I think you could do some eye clean up - maybe take out a couple of the tiny catchlights below the main one.
Oh, ok. I think I misunderstood at first. Yeah, I noticed in the field that those head feathers didn’t really have any sheen to them. They were very dark, even compared to the other black feathers. I dodged them just enough to where I saw some detail but not so much that they appeared washed out. These guys (like most black birds) are tough to expose and post process.
