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Hi
Another one of a Yellow Weaver bird. Thank you to everyone who commented on yesterdays image and the modification that was made, it's very much appreciated.
Let me know what you think about this one.
Best Wishes
Tracey
| Title: | Yellow Weaver Bird #1 |
| Username: | 
Tracey_McGovern |
| Uploaded: | 8 Nov 2011 - 9:26 PM |
| Camera: | Canon EOS 400D |
| Lens: | EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM |
| Recording media: | RAW (digital) |
| Date Taken: | 7 Jul 2011 - 8:58 AM |
| Tags: | Africa, Bird, Lake Bunyoni, Uganda, Wildlife / nature, Yellow Weaver |
| Votes: | Voting Disabled |
 | Critique Wanted |
| Modifications Welcome (Upload a Modification) |
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Comments
Hi Tracey,
Wow what a shot, you've done really well here, the composition, the angles the sharpness are all great and its eye really jumps out.
Where I think that you could improve the image is the background. As we look at the image, the seed pods hanging below the birds right foot is a big distraction for me as is the twig thingy going diagonally up to the right. Also I think that the bird just blends with the branch a little too much.
I have uploaded a mod to try and show you what I meant where I have: Added a little fill light to get some of the details out on the birds black face, cloned out the twig and nuts (not very well, sorry) and brightened its eye a little more. I also desaturated the background slightly and blurred the main branch a little more to try and make the bird stand out more.
I hope that this helps with what is a great shot.
DaVeS
OK, - so now we have all the exif and the camera/lens details, and the correct colour space - progress!
next you need to lets us know the major tweaks youve applied, - if any. As an example, - the background colour to me looks not quite right, and it appears to have a vignette, - something you modified?
Apart from that, another very good shot. Similar to my comments yesterday, - if the goal is to have this as natural as possible, I find it just a little too contrasty and sharp, with the yellow oversaturated.
To ascertain if a colour is actually oversaturated, - and not be subjective, open the curves dialogue; at the RGB drop down, select each colour in turn, and see if any are extending in significant amounts beyond the right of the graph. If you look at this, the RED shows its well beyond, but its only by reducing the yellow saturation that you can get the RED back inside the graph. A little over is not bacd, - but some colours, especially yellow and red bleed across adjacent pixels and can cause the shot to lose some detail. So the mod is on the same lines as yesterday.
Cropped a little to move the bird left and up.
Also, - lets know if your monitor is calibrated.
regards
Willie
I think that I'd desaturate it just a touch and as with yesterday's shot, I reckon this is sharpened by about as much as you'll get away with but that aside, I'd leave it alone.
Great stuff.
Bren.
You are developing an excellent portfolio and the critique team are doing an excellent job of giving you good advice. Personally I don't mind the seed pod too much as it identifies the habitat ( Erythrina spc's) - from a purely artistic view it probably needs to go. A
Thank you all for your kind comments and feedback. Like you Dave and Frank, I considered taking out the seed pod but decided to leave them in as like Accipiter says, it puts the bird in it's habitat, thanks to Accipiter for identifying the species 
. I think if I was to enter this image into a competition, I would probably have a go at taking it out, but I personally like it in for now.
Thank you again to Willie for your time in reviewing my picture. The only mods I have done is to crop it to a square image, altered the levels a bit and sharpened the bird. I originally had this printed using the printers profile, then realised after yesterdays comments that I needed to convert it back to sRGB to upload to ePZ, but when I did that the colours looked washed out in comparison so I tried to bring them back, I had particular trouble with the yellow, which is probably why it looks a bit too saturated. I calibrated my monitor at the weekend using Spyder3pro and as yet I'm not so sure about it because my monitor now looks really bright compared to what it did so I'm tweeking my images so they look right on mine but I'm a bit bothered that they are going to look dark on other peoples monitors, I copied some on a pen drive today to try them on my works monitor and they looked ok so fingers crossed, you are all seeing what I'm seeing on mine.
The only other tweek I did to the image was to add a slight vignette just to try and direct the eye to the actual bird. The blue background is a lake and I've not altered the colour of that so it's as it is. Thanks again everyone, I truly value your comments. Tracey
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