Rainbow Bee Eater

[Paul Burdett]

Hi all,
Spent a fantastic morning with Gail Bisson when she visited Brisbane recently. Here's a Bee Eater taken at Oxley Creek Common during our bird walk.
7Dii, 100-400 @ 400mm, f6.3, 1/3200th sec, iso160, manual mode, hand-held. I'm interested to get opinions on whether to keep or clone out the plant. I did this on other shots of this bird, but i quite like it as is. Cheers.

[David Roach]

I like the perch as is. Even wish the other branch was in focus too but I like it as is. Is the ISO correct? Love the colors in this one. Sounds like a productive walk.

[John Mack]

The light is sweet. Nice pose and composition. The vertical treatment works well. I like the plant as is.

[Paul Burdett]

Thanks David & John.
David: iso is correct.

[Jonathan Ashton]

i would leave the plant it looks fine to me. the bird looks a little heavy to me, the blacks are very dense, the lores could be persuaded to show much more detail and then I think the image would come alive.

[Paul Burdett]

Thanks Jonathan. Here's a repost after adjusting the shadow/highlights. Thoughts?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Certainly an improvement Paul, I would not have used "Shadows and Highlights" setting to make the adjustments, (did you use that setting?) I would have used alternative options.

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Jonathan. Thank you for the feedback. I actually tried a couple of things: target adjustment tool in acr and shadow/highlight adjustment in PS. I'm actually happy with the re-post. However, there are other possibilities that I may try as well which include adding detail using Nik Efex pro 50/50 recipe , layer masks and luminosity masks....I'm fairly confident in PS. Cheers.

[Arthur Morris]

Super-sharp. The shadows on the parch bug me a lot more than the plant. The lack of d-o-f on the plant makes is somewhat distracting (that from the man who usually could care less about d-o-f.)

with love, artie

[Paul Burdett]

Hi Artie. The shadows on the perch bug me too! (I may have a go at fixing that).
Cheers,
Paul