Morning Mrs. Oriole

This was taken in my in-laws backyard. They have a great porch on the back of their house with a collection of bird feeders next to it. About 40-50 feet away are several trees with nice photogenic exposed branches. I got myself positioned such that this nice opening was lined up with the background far enough away so that it would be mostly out of focus. The light was perfect in this spot with the late morning dappled light filtering though the tree canopy. Once in position, I grabbed my camera look up and there she was, in the perfect position. It all happened so fast, I did not even have a chance to setup the tripod. She gave me several poses, looking in the other direction, up, down, but I think this one was the best. So glad my subject was in-tune with me on this shot! :smiley:

Specific Feedback Requested

Any feedback welcome, but would really like comments on composition and lighting as well as post-processing

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Nikon D500 w/Tamron 15-600mm G2 Lens @ 600mm. ISO 800, 1/350 @ f6.3 handheld.
Cropped slightly, general minor exposure, contrast, saturation, sharpening, noise removal all done in Lightroom. Exported to Photoshop to remove some distracting highlights in the background that I could not avoid.

1 Like

Beautiful.
I would darken the bright whiter spots on the branch to the right. They compete with the white on the wings.
I also might crop off a bit of the dark space on the right, eliminating the lighter spot on the bottom right.

The composition looks good to me, Doug. I agree with Anita on bringing down the bright spots on the foreground branch. When I looked at the largest image, the bird didn’t quite look as sharp as it could be though a bit of sharpening might bring out more feather detail. A very nice image.

What a wonderful bird with a great pose and setting! I agree with toning down the highlights just a bit.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I try a re-edit and see what can be done about the highlights. As far as sharpness, I was just setting up when I took this shot. It surprised me how quickly he landed in the spot where I wanted. Sadly, I was rushed, did not have the tripod setup and this was taken handheld with image stabilization off. I’m pretty unsteady handholding the 150-600mm and so that is likely why the unsharpness in the image. I will try an push the sharpening a bit further and see what I can do there.

Really nice photo, Doug! You planned everything so perfectly and in my opinion it really shows in this image! I really love her pose and the lighting and background is very nice! 1/350 @ 600mm with a moving bird is impressive!

Hello, Doug, nice bird, placed well in the frame. The OOF branch is a little distracting to me (due to the OOF and the highlights on it), but other than that a fine image ! best, Hans