I only see these occasionally but this guy decided to check out the feeder this morning. I was shooting hummingbirds and he cooperated for about half a second. Canon 1DX2, Canon 600mm f/4 + 2X, f/11, 1/640, ISO 1600. More DOF would have been nice but no time to change anything. I was lucky to get him in the frame. Minimal work except for removing part of the feeder in the LL. No crop. Slight Shadow and Highlight adjustments in LR, WB tweak for smoky skies (better today). No sharpening except the LR default; no NR.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
All comments welcome!
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1 Like
Great pose, Diane, and beautiful detail in the Nuthatch. You may have seen me mention it in other critiques, but since this is a back yard setup, you can always shoot that perch after the bird leaves and combine a couple of frames to get the entire perch in focus.
You must be sending the smoke this way-it’s been bad the last few days, though we’ve been generating plenty of our own up here. We had a wildfire stop across the street on Tuesday, though luckily it was relatively small and only one house was lost.
Hi,
I like the lighting which is soft, but gives the burden some nice subtle highlights on the head. You could do the stick as Dennis suggested, but the nuthatch stands out quite nicely. Well done…Jim
Thanks guys! Dennis, I’ve been known to do that, especially for removing distracting shadows. Didn’t think to try it here for focus. With focus I’d want to be careful it isn’t obvious that the focal plane has changed too much But here, somewhat sharper on that edge would be an improvement. I may have another frame from today (or with similar lighting from another day) that I could use. A corollary is that when the bird is too close to a frame edge I’ll swing the camera a little right / left / up / down without changing focus (easy because I’m almost always using back button focus) and shoot another frame to use to add some canvas.
A fire across the street is way too close!
Hi Diane, nice composition and feather detail. I like the downward looking pose. Well done.
Diane: this is an excellent capture of a typical nuthatch move. The bird really stands out nicely against the muted background. No nits. Richard
Hello, Diana, an amazing pose - usually I see them to this against vertical trees, but hardly ever on a branch like this, must have been the feeder, but the result is great ! Cheers, Hans
Thanks everyone! He was definitely headed for the feeder!
