Sweet Chickadee & repost in b&w

Sweet Chickadee

Black and white…

I’m so excited that my planter sunflowers finally are at the seed stage! I’m getting mainly chickadees and sometimes scrub jays, it’s so fun to get to help feed the birds and have them come so close!

Specific Feedback Requested

Anything and I’d like feedback on the b&w version, I had tried to post it earlier but the site wouldn’t let me.

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400, 300mm, ISO 1600, f/6.3, 1/800

apani.hill
2 Likes

Hello, Vanessa. Classic and lovely position of the Chickadee, and I like the way this little ‘thing’ curls in front of its head. If you have cropped the image, I would suggest to have some more on the right hand side, as the tail seems to be cut off (I think I see it between the leaf and the edge of the image). You may also consider lifting the shadows a bit, as the bird was shot against a bright background it looks a little dark. Must be a thrill to have these visitors :slight_smile: ! Cheers, Hans

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Hi Vanessa. I agree with Hans comments. You should be able to bring the Chickadee up a bit more. With a bright background like this a bit of fill flash can really help. If you don’t have an external flash, you can probably get by with the internal one as a start. A good starting point for fill flash is to set the flash exposure compensation at -2 EV. If the picture looks like it was taken with flash, drop down a bit further. You’ll be amazed at what it can do.

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You have a good opportunity here and good suggestions above. I’d suggest picking that leaf. It would be nice to time shooting when the BG is a little darker, but for this one, you should be able to open up the shadows a lot with the Shadows slider. The light on the sunflower is perfect and bird is very cute – I hope (s)he will come back and pose again!

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Hello @Hans_Overduin @Dennis_Plank @Diane_Miller , I actually had worked to bring down the saturation of the BG on the original image and the crop was trying to get rid of the bright white part and I think I was trying to not show the tail beyond the leaf for the crop as it wasn’t in focus, this is my original image nothing done to it except converted to jpg and sized for the site….
image

Also @Diane_Miller @Hans_Overduin @Dennis_Plank I wouldn’t mind your feedback back on my b&w version, that was actually my original vision for the image but the site wouldn’t let me download it earlier but I finally got it to work now!

The B/W is lovely in that you got such nice tonal balance. You should be able to get a lot of that with the color version. The problem with the BG isn’t so much color or saturation, but brightness. And the bird is so dark there is no detail.

Try to position yourself to get rid of the white area in the LL.

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I agree that the tonal balance is better than a black-and-white image than it is in the color image. You did a really good job on the plumage in the black-and-white. Other comments from other posters also make sense with regard to the color image.

1 Like