Green Rosella: for critique

Hi Graham, I'm happy to start the ball rolling and accept critique for the attached image taken at Inala Bruny Island last week. What extra details do you need on it, it is also posted on the Birdlife Photography Photo Gallery. Thanks and Cheers Andrew

Hi Andrew,


It's a fine picture of a type I like the most- a bird being itself. I would be well satisfied with having taken it. The bird is comfortable in your presence, yet looking quietly at the camera. There's something very enjoyable about the scene.


What I personally find is holding the image back, and this is just my opinion, is a loss of clarity which robs it of what some photographers call "pop". I would put this down to camera movement while the image was being taken. I've taken shots at a 1,600 of a second and still found evidence of movement by either the camera or the bird. I feel the better our cameras get, the more often this can be seen.


The best way to show you what I mean is to remove it from your image and for this I need to re-post it. I hope you don't mind. If you do, please let me know and I'll delete this reply straight away.


The first thing I did was use the most useful tool I know for this sort of correction, which is found in Photoshop under the "filters" section. It's the shake reduction tool and is found at the top of the filter list. I have used it at its default level, making no change to the standard settings and applied it to five points on your image. I made a copy of your image in a layer before I began to work on it, because I like to blend parts of the original and reworked image as I change things.


Having done this, I found the flower seed heads intruded too much in the scene, so I painted the adjustment layer to allow these parts of your original image to show through.


Next I converted the image to LAB colour and played around with the brightness and contrast just a touch. Changing from RGB mode to LAB colour before hand makes it impossible to blow any of the colour channels. Once again, if there were spots on the processed image where I didn't like the result, I painted the original layer back in.


The result is slightly over done to make the change clearer. For me, your image now has a little more vitality, gained for the most past from being more three dimensional. It goes without saying that this is a matter of taste.


In the field I nearly always use a carbon tripod, often with my camera bag hanging from it. This makes a lot of difference to the shock of the shutter release. If the circumstances won't allow this at the time, then the anti-shake tool is very handy way to regain real detail, so long as it's not pushed too hard.


It's far more effective than sharpening, which generally plays around with an image's contrast to create an impression of detail.


Nice picture.

Thanks Les
Great feedback.
While I was happy with the composition and love the image, I knew something wasn't quite right. Now that you've highlighted it, and corrected it, I can see what you mean.
Whilst I was in single shot mode for this image, I guess I was somewhat rushed in that I fired a number of shots in quick succession trying to get "the shot" before the bird took off....not believing the bird was still there!. Yes, my tripod was not weighted to help minimise vibration/shake.
Secondly, now in retrospect, I think the camera might have still been in nine point focus rather than one point spot focus, because I'd been shooting some birds in flight just previous, and that maybe explains why the flower seed heads are too intrusive having dominated the focus but the bird's eye (to me) is in good focus but the outline of the bird is just on the rear edge of the sharp focal range and becoming soft?
Again, appreciate this new forum and your input, and can't believe that other members haven't got on board yet.
This forum needs to be promoted to members, and I'm happy for you to use this post as an example

Hello again Andrew,

I glad the suggestion was useful. Over night I thought of two more techniques that may help when using long lenses.

The first is to cup your hand on your longer lenses as you take the picture. Your hand will take up the shock of the shutter activation and the resulting image will be sharper. You may have seen a photograph of Tom Oliver demonstrating this technique at the Birds In the Bush Event at Glue Pot a few years ago. I can post this picture if you haven't.

The second suggestion is your method of focusing. As you say, if there are branches, sticks or flowers in the way, I agree it's best to use the smallest number of focus points you can. This will lessen the chance that the camera will go looking to focus on the wrong thing.

In addition, I use the sports photographer's shooting technique, where the focus and the shutter release are kept on separate buttons. This lessens the chance of you loosing focus accidentally and generally gets you your focus more quickly. Once you have acquired it, you simply take your finger off the button you have assigned the focus to and start taking your pictures with the other.

Often you can aim at a branch or patch of ground that you know will give you the right focus for the bird, and then point back to your subject, keeping your finger off the focus button and then firing away with the shutter button. This works especially well with birds in thick bush land.

It took about three weeks to get used to doing the focus/shutter split, but it's the way I have my camera set up all the time. You might find this worth trying yourself.

Thanks Les, yes I had read of this method of focusing using seperate buttons and will give it a go!

Hi Andrew,

Well done for taking this challenge and becoming the first cab off the rank to submit an image for critique. I see that you have received good advice. I did write a long response to you yesterday and which disappeared after posting. Neither Les nor me can account for this event and so Im posting this quick response to check that the system will not repeat itself. I all is good then I will write a second response shortly.

Cheers
Graham