[Leica] IMG: White-rumped Shama (repost)

[rgacpa at yahoo.com (Bob Adler)]

Hi Doug,

The differences are obvious. What I particularly like is that there is more 
detail in the head of the Shama and?the color balance is better (tail 
feathers are now white,?chest feathers show some white highlights, etc).

I do find the brightness of the green background a bit overwhelming, but 
that's just my opinion.?Nature?rarely, if ever, listens to my opinion, and 
I?imagine this is what it really looked like.?Maybe a bit desaturation of 
the background as well as burning or fixing the bright white line to the 
left of the Shama's beak would help me focus more on the subject.

I'm also curious, if you wouldn't mind sharing, how you masked the 
background from the Shama so well. Any technique you could share would be 
appreicated.

Obviously it goes without saying that you've caught this skittish fellow 
with a beautiful catchlight in his eye and crisply focused?in a lovely pose 
showing his peaked awareness. So if you did nothing it would be a 
spectacular image. It looks like he's just about to spirit away; I can feel 
the?tension.

Thanks for showing.
Best,
Bob
?Bob Adler
Palo Alto, CA
http://www.rgaphoto.com 




________________________________
From: Doug Herr <wildlightphoto at earthlink.net>
To: "lug at leica-users.org" <lug at leica-users.org>; LEG <leica at 
freelists.org>; LeicaReflex <leicareflex at freelists.org>
Sent: Wed, December 23, 2009 9:01:27 PM
Subject: [Leica] IMG: White-rumped Shama (repost)

Last winter I photographed a White-rumped Shama in very poor lighting 
conditions; much like the Western Bluebird re-posted a week or so ago, the 
light on the Shama was heavily filtered / colored by overhead foliage making 
good color balance tricky at best: good color balance on the bird resulted 
in drab? foliage, and good foliage color turned the bird a sickly green.

For this lighting condition I've created two separate Curves adjustment 
layers, one for the foliage and one for the bird, creating a mask for each 
layer corresponding to its intended target.

Here's the result for the Shama:

(previous) http://www.wildlightphoto.com/temp/wrsh00.jpg

(revised) http://wildlightphoto.com/birds/turdidae/wrsh00.jpg

All comments are welcome.

Doug Herr
Birdman of Sacramento
http://www.wildlightphoto.com



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