Rufous Hummingbird

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

I posted a question in the post processing discussion section asking if anyone had advice on how to handle the out of focus bloom coming into this image. @Hank_Pennington suggested a circular crop. I still haven’t figured out how to do a really good circular crop in PS or any other software, but I thought this made a reasonable alternative. I do like his suggestion and I think it works nicely to minimize the disturbance caused by that bloom.

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What technical feedback would you like if any?

Anything. You’ll see some vertical shadows from a fence if you look closely. I tried removing them, but looking at it now, I don’t think I got them all.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

I left a bit of image showing through in the area outside the circle-does that work? Does the color work?

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 421 mm, tripod with ball head and sidekick, f/8, 1/640, iso 2000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 4092x3576. The outside are was created by doing an elliptical selection and inverting it then painting over that area with a 25% brush and a color selected from within the circle. I brushed a few times until I got an effect I liked.
Taken Saturday, June 6th at 7:35 am while @David_Schoen was shooting Siskins on the other side of the flowers.

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1 Like
2

Amazing detail and color on the Rufous. The elliptical crop is a reasonable alternative for the comp. You could also throw a moderate vignette on a landscape crop.

3

I agree! It works great. In fact the oval or ellipse looks to work better than round might. I frankly didn’t even notice the faint bit of image showing outside the frame. You’ve nicely confirmed my feeling that squares and rectangles are getting tedious, and there’s lots of room for other presentations, with some (many?) images profiting from the change. This one is certainly better for my eye. Well done.

4

This turned out great, Dennis! I like what you did. This to me is a wall hanger! Very nice.