I want to learn from the expert.

[Ely Teehankee]

I will take my chances. I believe you can be fair and objective without being harsh. If its the truth and I will learn from my mistakes so be it. Its only now that I saw this corner.

Canon 5DM2, EF 800mm F5.6 IS L Lens, ISO 1600 1/500 @f6.3 Beanbag on car window.

Original photo converted to jpeg:





PP converted to jpeg:





I trust that I have followed your instruction on posting to the letter. Thank you Romy.

[Romy Ocon]

Hi Ely,

The first photo is not showing, please check the link?

Romy

[Ely Teehankee]

Hi Romy, I checked the link and I am on the same page right now and it is showing. I sent you a PM with a picture of it. Thanks.

[Romy Ocon]

Ely, it's not showing on both my computers, one on DSL and the other on wireless broadband.

You can email me the jpeg (the screenshot you sent has the photo cut off at right), or you can re-upload it to your gallery and try posting it again.

[Ely Teehankee]

I am sending another copy of the jpeg of the original picture. I hope you do get to see it now. Its getting exciting to know what is going to happen. Heh heh heh. I have also sent you a copy to your email address.

[Romy Ocon]

Ok Ely, got the large jpeg.



On the Capture

I bet you'd give an arm and a leg for a natural perch on this one, Ely! Despite the unphotogenic perch, the great action and the colorful subject makes this a noteworthy capture. The highlights are a bit hot on the jpeg I got, but if you shot in RAW, these can be easily saved.


On the Cropping/Composition

I'd crop and compose it the same way you did because the subject is longer vertically, and this has a mitigating effect of not showing more of the fence than absolutely necessary.


On the Post-Processing

The brightness of the photo as processed might be good for prints, but for web display, I'd frankly say that it looks a tad on the bright side on my calibrated LCD. Most monitors of the general public are uncalibrated and are set too bright. This will make the photo even brighter to your non-photographer friends.

The bottom line is we process for the medium through which we'll display our photos. For prints, these aren't backlit so a brighter photo would be ok.

In addition, I suspect a significant amount of noise reduction and sharpening were done at the same time. This could result into a bit of over-processed look, especially when we try to recover details lost to NR by sharpening.

Working on the large jpeg you sent, I did the following:

1. Cropped to similar composition as you did.

2. Recovered the highlights on the wings, perch and the belly of the lizard.

3. Did some sharpening on the subject (100, 0.3,1 then followed by 240, 0.2, 1), and NR on the out-of-focus background. Sharpening, like in sculpture, needs different chisel sizes for various sizes of detail.

4. Cut back the exposure, then boosted the saturation and contrast.

5. Applied another dash of extra sharpening (50, 0.5, 1) on the head area to counter-act the slight motion blur of the head.

[Ely Teehankee]

As expected you taught me a wonderful lesson. Now that you mentioned it, yes I would like it better if the bird was on a branch or rock instead of the prison like fence. But to tell you frankly when I saw the bird on the fence, after waiting for some time for the rain to stop and the sun to shine, it was already too good to be true to see this bird with a lizard. It was like Mana from Heaven. I will not complain. I am grateful that I was given this opportunity. I remember you telling me about the color calibrator the first time I met you. I am expecting it this week. Hopefully it will improve my PP. I will study your comments and backtrack to what I did so that I can do better next time. It seems like you process the bird part by part. I did it as a whole. Thank you Romy for showing me the way. Now that I am aware of this Critique Corner you can expect me to use it more often. I noticed that it is seldom used. As for me its an opportunity to learn. Mabuhay.

[Romy Ocon]

Some post processing routines should only be applied locally (not globally) - sharpening need to be done on sharp details, but not on soft, out-of-focus areas because this will introduce noise. Isolated highlight or shadows may be selected and pulled or pushed without affecting the whole photo. These routines are normally done via layers to isolate each adjustment and allow us to vary the effect of each one via the layer's opacity control.