The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This is an older image (2005), but I did use it as a holiday greeting card that year. I was lucky to have an ornamental cherry tree not far from my back door. After getting my rig set, I slowly opened my back door and was able to shoot 550 frames. My wife wasn’t too happy though because the house was freezing!
Specific Feedback
At a relatively slow shutter speed, it’s admittedly a bit soft, but I think that sort of adds to the bird’s fluffiness. I’m interested in comments/suggestions about saturation , sharpness or any other feedback.
Technical Details
Nikon D2H, Tamron 300mm f4 and Nikon 1.4 tele (yielding 420mm, f5.6), 1/90 sec , ISO 200, tripod, cable release. Editing included an exposure boost, highlight and shadow adjustments, some capture sharpening and a saturation boost to the bird only using HSL in Photoshop.
This is really cool, Ron. All those berries! The softness of the bird almost looks like a bit of haze-maybe on the lens, because it seems to be all over the photo and with a cable release, you should be able to shoot at that shutter speed (barring wind). I think you could give the bird a bit of a boost in your RAW processor by bringing down the highlights on the belly and boosting contrast and saturation (or using the dehaze function). The local adjustment brush in LR is one of my favorite tools for that sort of thing.
Sweet!! The softness works well for the subject. It could be due to a combination of things – the lens, the TC and how solid the tripod was. Everything has gotten so much better in the last 20 years. But shooting out an open door into the cold, thermal mixing would have been an enormous issue.
I’ll probably do another Waxwing card this year, too, but out here, a white Christmas is due to fog.
“Fruitful” is right, Ron! I particularly like the composition here, the parallel branches and how the bird seems to be facing along them. The fuzziness adds a pleasant effect of winter fog or snow to match the snowy BG. Nice one.
Thank you @Dennis_Plank , @Diane_Miller and @Mike_Friel for your interest and comments. Dennis, I used your suggestion to do a repost of the image and I think that did have a positive impact. Much appreciated!
Glad it worked, Ron. When you go into the edit mode to add the repost it works best to put your repost at the top of the original post (just put the cursor there before you upload). You can label it as a repost and label the original as well. It’s also customary to put “and Repost” or similar in the title which is also open for edit in that mode.
This is really nice Ron. I really like the muted colors and the balance of this one, and the full frame of berries. I like the rework, but they both have a nice chilly effect.
