Female
Male
Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
The evening of the Tanager morning of my recent posts was spent at a hummingbird and butterfly garden (didn’t get past the hummingbirds). This was my next to last day of the trip and the last day didn’t produce much, so this is almost the end of my first go through of processing and I need to get out and start photographing our local spring birds.
Like most hummingbirds, this species is spectacularly sexually dimorphic, so I’ve included images of both. I’ve been using the Google camera function a lot on these to verify my memory of the species ID’s and it’s been quite effective, but for female hummingbirds, it’s not quite so good!
Specific Feedback
I’m not sure about leaving the dangly down things on the image of the male.
Technical Details
Both images were taken at the same settings: Sony A1, FE 200-600 + 1.4 TC @ 424 mm, monopod, f/9, 1/200, iso 5000, manual exposure. Preprocessed in DxO PureRaw 4, processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 3366x4266 for the female and 4237x3085 for the male. Both taken within a minute of 3:10 local time.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
- Vision and Purpose:
- Conceptual:
- Emotional Impact and Mood:
- Composition:
- Balance and Visual Weight:
- Depth and Dimension:
- Color:
- Lighting:
- Processing:
- Technical:
Both very nice, with detail in the tiny feathers! There’s a magenta cast in the first – so common and so easy to overlook. I think the dangly things are a bit distracting but could be a challenge to remove completely. I don’t mind them being OOF and like the little leaf. Maybe they could be pruned a bit?
Wonderful color,textures,detail,poses, and composition.
Dennis, the details in the feathers an the eyes are wonderful. Nice BG on both. I can see the slight magenta cast that @Diane_Miller noted in the first image. It’s kind of weird, but I like the dangly twigs in the shot with the male. I think they help balance the overall composition a bit better. Perhaps if you could selectively clone out the one that is OOF and leave the other that is in focus it would work.
Hi Dennis, both brilliant birds and the male is spectacular. I don’t think the dangly stem adds to the second image. May be tricky to remove since it intersects the feet though. Both well done captures.
Nicely done, Dennis. I like both images. Beautiful hummers.
Both beautiful and the colors in the male are spectacular and the detail is excellent. I find my eye is drawn a bit to the color in the male’s frame. I’d be inclined to remove the branch and perhaps lower the bird in the frame. I’ve found the remove tool in PS does a great job and it seems to work best by encircling the object to be removed rather than painting over it. What’s the Google camera function? There’s been times when, in a new region, I could use a jog for my memory.
@Allen_Brooks Thanks, Allen. The Google Camera function:
If you click on the far right icon in the search box that pretends to resemble a camera, you can either drag and drop a photo or load one by the normal file search methods. It will try to identify it and does a pretty decent job on Costa Rica birds at least. I tend to use the "Snip and Sketch tool in Windows to crop as close to the boundaries of the bird as possible, temporarily save it to my desktop and then get rid of it when I’m done.
1 Like
Thanks, @Dennis_Plank . That’s pretty good. I dragged in a terrible image of a bird I couldn’t identify and it came up with the right answer (at least the same answer I received from an expert birder to whom I sent the same photo.)
Glad to know it was useful. I hadn’t tried it on what I’d consider a really poor image yet except for one that was basically a butt shot and it didn’t work on that unfortunately.
