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Challenge: June Update

Updated: Jun 24

6/22/2024


Going to start working on my Alaska posts soon, but I thought I would start with a bit of a warm-up post, first. Sounds like a perfect time for a challenge update.


Last month's challenge was to get a photo of a bird singing. It was May. The last thing I was concerned about was getting a singing bird in May. Or so I thought. "I can bird". "I can find warblers during migration." "I will get a shot of a migrant warbler singing." These are the things that went through my head. I more or less did exactly that; except it was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I also ended up with a picture of a state-breeding warbler instead of a passage migrant. Compromises were made. It is hard to complain about an open shot of a Kentucky Warbler; so, I will quit trying. Here is what I submitted.


Feedback was fairly minimal. The perch was a bit cool/blue. The feathers in the throat are a bit blown. The image is a tad underexposed. There are a few white specs on the bird's nape and wing. It was also noted that I was off light angle and that the bird is a bit above me. Not necessarily detractions, but these things did contribute to the issues with the throat blowing out a bit.


These observations are also accurate. It was a cloudy day, but there is a light angle even on cloudy days. A true neutral day is rare, and usually a bit too dark to shoot anyway. The perch here was a young tree that hand been broken and damaged when a larger tree fell on it. I was using some nearby bushes for cover, and the perch was surrounded by brush. The bird pished into the brush and then slowly worked his way to the top of this perch. I was pretty amazed. As for the other items, well, it is hard to balance the green tones and the yellow tones. Compromises have to be made. There are two sets of green and a very well-lit yellow throat to barter out, here. In addition, the bird is missing several feathers on its throat. These are showing as white areas when the bird sings. This lead me to pull down exposure a bit and keep the image a little on the blue end. Here is the corrected image, based on feedback.


Pretty much the same. I masked the perch and adjusted the tone to be a bit warmer. I bumped the overall exposure a bit. To handle the throat, I used a clone stamp to blot out most of the white feathers and followed this up with reducing highlights, again. I say "again", because they had already been adjusted once. I did not go back to the original photo for this edit. I used the exported jpeg. This is known as double-processing. It can buy you a lot more leeway for something like a highlight adjustment. There is nothing wrong with it. You just have to be aware of artifacts like banding that can easily crop up when doing this. Anyway, it got me the extra room I needed for pulling down the throat feather a bit more. Other than that, I cloned out the couple of white specs.


In the end, I almost prefer the slightly underexposed shot a little more. The throat did need some attention, though. In the theme for this post, maybe a compromise between the two would have been a bit better.


This brings us to June. June is "eye level". I was really relying on my Alaska trip for this shot. I had dreams of eiders, loons, and ducks in the water. That turned out to be a bit tough. I will cover that in an upcoming post. What this leaves me with are a few shots from early spring and a couple shots from Alaska to consider. Trying to figure out my plan for the rest of the year. I got a number of shots from Alaska that would cover upcoming categories, but I do not want to be "that guy who went to Alaska" for every shot. We will see.


Thanks for reading,

Mike



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