On the day I took the recently posted male Flicker portrait, this red breasted nuthatch appeared out of the corner of my peripheral vision and I was able to snap one single image before it moved on. I’m going to post both which I called the rescue version. The original image was overexposed, very noisy, blown out whites, and the shadow of a wire behind the bird. I took this on as a challenge saying that I can turn this throwaway image into something worth looking at. This was my attempt.
Overexposed, very noisy, somewhat sharp and with many distractions. Could this be made to look legitimately decent? Or should I just have thrown it away and waited for another opportunity.? Please be honest. Yes, there are a few items such as the area on the chin which could probably be worked on. The whole process took me less than 15 minutes
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
ISO 2500, 400+1.4 X, F7 .1, 2000th, fill flash. Processed in DxO photo lab 4.3, Topaz D noise, Photoshop and light room.
Well, your rescue worked out nicely. The difficult part however, was/is the shadow of the wire, which would be hard to get rid of below the bill - wouldn’t know how to do that without losing the little ‘hairs’. Anyway, you are much more proficient in pp-ing than I am LOL ! cheers, Hans
Excellent rescue, David. The finished product looks very natural except for the dark area in front of the throat. You might look up some tutorials on how to do a selection/mask on hair-there are tons of them out there, and apply one of those techniques to those bristles. My old Topaz ReMask can do it, though it’s pretty time consuming to get it just right. Their newer masking tool might be better and easier.
Awesome job on the pp! Definitely a cute pose and bird, worth the effort to make it look good! If you can make below the chin look better, I don’t think anyone would know the difference! I just thought I’d have some fun with your image myself. Hope you don’t mind and I don’t know if b&w is your thing but it kind of hides the wire w/o having to try to heal it and then ruin the bird, what do you think?..,
