Blue Jay 1

[Randall Farhy]

Another in the backyard series, lured with cracked corn/ peanut mixture scattered on the ground.

Mid-morning, generally overcast conditions.

Canon 7D manual mode, back button spot focus
400mm F5.6L
ISO 800, 1/1250 F5.6
Monopod

Flash: 600 EX RT Manual Mode ~1/4 power

Subject distance ~16'

Processing: RAW conversion in Lightroom4, topaz demoise5 then processed in Lightroom. +1.05 exposure level and tweaks. Extra NR on BG area, detail sharpened bird and branch. Crop is free form, 78% of frame intact. A couple of circular highlights removed from the bg. Reduction in Elements9, out-put sharpened 50% @ .3pix. Would have preferred a longer aspect ratio but there are issues with background clutter in the upper left, full frame version.

Remaining (unedited) blurred distractions along left side of the middle branch proved too much for my limited PS skills to remove.

Suggestions, C&C welcome and appreciated.


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[Colin Gilyeat]

Randall,

I like the head position and the eye contact. To me, the feathers on the crown look a little soft, but that could be because of my monitor, or just my eyes. I wonder if you could minimize the background brach distractions with some blurring. Like you, my PS skills are still in their infancy, so I have similar problems when it come to cleaning things up.

Colin

 

[Randall Farhy]

Thanks Colin- The shallow DoF with this lens/ aperture/distance combination is a real challenge. Critical focus landed on the bill with the DoF just catching the orbital area. It's not often I catch these with their crown raised, so I went with it. I'll try blurring the bg see how that goes. I will also try darkening the bg to make the bird stand out a bit more.

 

[Jeannean Ryman]

• Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Macintosh

Randall, like Colin, I like your head position and eye contact. Very nicely done. I'm not sure if you have any more bottom to include from the crop, but I think I'd prefer to see the bird's tail (or what is evident of the tail behind the perch). As for background blurring, I gave it a go in CS 5 to see how it would look. Not sure how Elements works, but I imagine you could do something similar with it. I did a selection of just the bird and perch, expanded it by 25 pixels, then feathered it by 10 pixels, did an inverse of the selection and applied the blur. While doing that, I noticed the breast feathers lacked detail, so did a slight curve adjustment for the highlights on the white part. My PP skills aren't that great either, so it's a beginner way of doing things. Someone else could do a much better job I'm sure.

 

[Randall Farhy]

Jeannean- Blurring the bg makes the bird stand out, it even looks sharper-I like it. Thanks for the step by step, I'm going to experiment with the technique and take another look at brushing in the breast area. As for the crop- bottom is at the boundary. I was a bit too close for the entire bird in this pose.

 

[Clyde Hopper]

Hi Randall , Just an after though , when I use flash , I think of it as two exposures . #1 is the aperture setting ,controlled by the distance of flash to subject ,and #2 shutter speed controlling how bright you want (or dark ) the Bg. I hope this makes sense . basically the flash is the shutter for the subject ,and the cam's shutter controls ambient .
So to get a darked Bg up the ss ....as long as your in HSS .

 

[Randall Farhy]

That's solid advice Clyde, thanks

 

[Bob Miller]

HI Randall....these guys are on of my favorite birds. To me your Jay looks fine ...feathers and all....only the bg needs work in my opinion. Try to blend out some of the lighter spots by using some paint. Take an eyedropper and sample some color you would like to paint with and then lower the brush opacity to around 20% and paint over some of the lighter spots to blend them with the bg. This technique takes a bit of practice but can really help cleanup a bg. i would also cleanup some of the distracting spots on the log perch with the clone tool.