Male American Redstart & Quadruplets

This male was very busy tending to the young ones - making about 80% of the food deliveries. The female would come in from time to time, sometimes with the male. Overall it was a fun project to go photograph this family for a few days about five minutes away from my house. The development of the young was strikingly rapid, with noticeable growth every day (perhaps gaining up to 50% in size each day!). They fledged in under 10 days from hatching...

Canon 7DII + 100-400L @320mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/200s., f/10, ISO 1600, handheld while standing on a four-foot stepladder, 580EX flash @ -2/3 FEC (flash was the main light most times under the dark forest canopy - the birds in no way appeared distressed of its use else I would have abandoned the project), FF, steel-eye effect removed from the larger chick, contrast and darks selectively added to lessen the effect of flash.

Dan I am following and loving these sequence. I am glad you are taking the opportunity to do this process. Tecs are spot on, well use of flash and great eye contact from parent and small one ready to fly. Keep on posting, please.

Daniel:

I like the raised mouths, plus the other chick looking like he is ready to move on! Nice use of flash. Dad looks like he is trying to decide which one to feed.

Because the large branch on the left is so forward and prominent, I might try to lower its luminosity a bit more and perhaps even lower the contrast a bit to try and help it recede a bit visually.

Cheers

Randy

PS: the attachment has a multiple layer , low level, run on the highlights. to try and reduce the brightness of the branch I mentioned, and also the nest a bit. Just a thought.

What fun you're having! Very nice family group, well captured moment. Randy's suggestion seems worth a try.

Wonderful capture of great behavior! (Especially from a ladder!) Randy's suggestion is worth a try, and maybe a little crop from the left would reduce the visual weight of those branches. But I was first struck even more by the warmer branches behind the bird running from UL to LR. Wonder if it would be possible to quick mask select them (with appropriately feathered edges) and use a Selective Color adjustment layer to bring the color more to green, so they blend in more. With an adjustment layer the selection edges can be modified with the Brush till they are perfect.

Love this one Dan. Great details and a terrific moment captured.

Will