Birds My First Posting of Photos - Feedback welcome

MrSparks999 · Apr 16, 2023

Bear · Apr 16, 2023

MrSparks999 said:
View attachment 14803 View attachment 14804 View attachment 14805 View attachment 14806 View attachment 14807 View attachment 14808

Beautiful on all of them

Chris Summers · Apr 16, 2023

Nice work! Looks like you went from the raptor show to a drag show!

BradS · Apr 16, 2023

Very nice set!

AKVet · Apr 17, 2023

Awesome! Looking forward more!

MrSparks999 · Apr 17, 2023

Thanks for the feedback, is there anything i could do or could have done to make them better?

shamlin · Apr 18, 2023

I think the bird captures are excellent. The barn owl shots are particularly impressive. It's hard to keep a bird that's flying towards you in focus, or at least it was before eye detect came along. The only criticism I'd make is that the backgrounds are a little distracting. You used large apertures on most of them, so you got most of the bokeh the conditions would allow. The only other way to make them less distracting would be in the processing.

Bucolic Old Sir Henry · Apr 18, 2023

shamlin said:
I think the bird captures are excellent. The barn owl shots are particularly impressive. It's hard to keep a bird that's flying towards you in focus, or at least it was before eye detect came along. The only criticism I'd make is that the backgrounds are a little distracting. You used large apertures on most of them, so you got most of the bokeh the conditions would allow. The only other way to make them less distracting would be in the processing.

I agree that they're great images. If only the wild ones would cooperate so nicely!

Re the backgrounds: If you're a Lightroom Classic user, Adobe have made it pretty easy to select the subject or background via the relatively new masking tools in the Develop module. I'd suggest creating a background mask and then darkening the background so the raptors pop more.

I do that with flowers, birds and so on, and the auto selections make it very easy. They can be adjusted with brushes if needed.

PKM-UK · Apr 18, 2023

Bucolic Old Sir Henry said:
I agree that they're great images. If only the wild ones would cooperate so nicely!

Re the backgrounds: If you're a Lightroom Classic user, Adobe have made it pretty easy to select the subject or background via the relatively new masking tools in the Develop module. I'd suggest creating a background mask and then darkening the background so the raptors pop more.

I do that with flowers, birds and so on, and the auto selections make it very easy. They can be adjusted with brushes if needed.

+1

And if you adopt the (excellent) masking tip as a regular editing task, consider creating an 'Adaptive Masking Preset' - basically open a suitable image, create a 'subject' mask (e.g. a slight pop of adjustments) then a background mask (e.g. slight blur/ darken), and finally create a new User Preset but only save the masking elements. You can then pick this Preset to very quickly apply these 'separation' adjustments to any similar image - the masks can always be tweaked further if needed.

(I would also recommend you enable the 'Support Amount Slider' setting).

Phil

Example Custom 'Subject Separation' Preset -

shamlin · Apr 18, 2023

I personally don't use Lightroom (any flavor), but the software I use - On1 - also makes masking very easy. I use the AI masks to separate the subject from the background quite a lot. On1 offers two purchase options, either outright with updates for a year, or subscription. I chose the former. I hate subscriptions.

Birds My First Posting of Photos - Feedback welcome

MrSparks999

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Bear

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Chris Summers

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BradS

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AKVet

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MrSparks999

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shamlin

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Bucolic Old Sir Henry

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PKM-UK

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shamlin

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