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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 40 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
Hi Julie. I'm visiting from group 52. Quite pretty birds and they are in perfect focus. I tried Anne's idea of flipping the horizontal not thinking it would work, but it does. The eye of the bird is not more clearly shown looking back toward the center. If this were mine, not being a purist, I'd blur the background even more and maybe take to some cloning to remove the fence line, or what appears to be a fence line. Nice image.
What they are eating appears to be a fruit of some sort but the two on the ground look like eggs. I'm curious if you know what it wa that they were eating. |
Oct 8th |
1 comment - 0 replies for Group 40
|
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Reply |
Thanks LC. I like your comments as I understand your reasons. I'm still taken by what I could get out of this image and that bias is why it's good to hear from others. I'll look at it again in the future and see what I think. The idea of a night shot is intriguing although with the sun as a major component I'm not sure if it would make sense. I guess I could pass it off as the moon.
Mike |
Oct 20th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Reply |
Hi Isaac. The bird and the sun were where you see them, which wouldn't hold me back, but then it would be a composite. I sent this one in just because of the transformation I never would have expected as you can't see the sun at all in the unprocessed version. The overcast sky kept the whites from blowing out which I didn't realize until I played with the image much later. Thanks for the input, Mike |
Oct 17th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Reply |
Thanks for both tips Sharon. They are now on my list to explore.
Mike |
Oct 16th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
Hi LC. I tried licking on your space on our home page but without an image posted nothing happens. Welcome aboard.
Mike
mykey4photo@gmail.com |
Oct 11th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
You achieved something very special with this image. The way the bokeh of the other flowers creates rays of complimentary light and colors emanating from the leaves that are the star of the show is fantastic. Super job. It's a shame that a leaf caused such a dark shadow on the upper left leaf, but only a minor concern to me. If you want to try this one again you might be able to pull that leaf back to avoid the shadow. I would also remove in post the point of the leaf sticking in on the left side. Great job Judith. This one is truly original and lovely. |
Oct 8th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
I like this image a lot. I was very slightly bothered (very slightly) by the flower in the back, and by the crop and felt like playing. I added a blur layer and applied it around the bird to draw more attention to the bird and the wonderful red flowers it was feeding from. I might have decided to remove that rear flower but in the end felt like it was a toss-up.
The really pretty red flowers were pulling me away from the bird, accentuated by the somewhat panoramic crop you employed. I cropped off the right side and had to remove a couple of petals that were sticking in.
Very beautiful image. |
Oct 8th |
 |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
I think your post processing is superb. I like the composition and the bird's posture adds a lot of interest. I think it's a Canada Goose, similar to a Snow Goose. Addressing your question, I don't use spot metering but if I were, I'd suggest metering off the whitest part of the subject, the chest in this case. That's a good general rule for all subjects where the intent is not to allow the whites to get blown out. You can recover shadows, at the cost of some noise, but you can't recover blown whites. You could, however, clone in some texture from other parts of the chest. It would take some work and a light hand, but could be done. Just in case there's some detail there, if you lower the exposure a great deal does anything come out in the white areas other than gray? If so, you have some detail and might be able to tweek it out. |
Oct 6th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
Very pretty and I love the fanned out tail feathers. I appreciate Lisa's comment but it doesn't bother me too much although I think it's valid. That would be easy to fix if you don't mind changing the reality a bit. The entire image, to my eye, lacks some contrast. A simple S curve would address that nicely, maybe masked so that only it only affected the center.
I'm envious of your new camera, which from what I can tell, leads the pack for wildlife shooters. Since you have hummers at home, I'd shoot the flash remotely and set it up on a stand near the flowers or feeder. You'll get a lot more light and be able to get more flashes at lower power settings. More flashes are even better. It also allows much slower shutter speeds, since the flash is the main light source and must faster than the shutter. Without that, I personally would be shooting at 1/4000 or faster as I like sharp wings. Even then most will show some blur. |
Oct 6th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Comment |
Ditto what Lisa said. Great image. Before I read Lisa's comments I was going to address the sky with a post processing suggestion. I've been learning new techniques of luminosity masking for dodging and burning, and other tricks using the TK luminosity panel that I have. Very complicated (for me) stuff. However, it can be done more simply in LR or PS with by just painting with a soft largish brush at low opacity in overlay or softlight blend modes. Paint with white where you want to dodge and black where you want to burn. Adding texture to the sky might also bring out more detail. |
Oct 6th |
| 52 |
Oct 20 |
Reply |
Thanks Lisa. Worth considering. I'm interested in what the others think. My initial reaction is that if I toned down the sun I'd have to tone up the owl, which would be less backlit, and I guess, in all honesty, I like the feeling of squinting into the sun backlighting the subject. Weird, I know. Thanks for the feedback, Mike. |
Oct 6th |
6 comments - 4 replies for Group 52
|
7 comments - 4 replies Total
|
