blp shabash 430x45
Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

Superb Fairy-wren

Photographed by

Angela Farnsworth on Wed 23rd Jun, 2021 and uploaded on Tue 13th Jul, 2021 .

Resolution

1776x1800

Viewed

276

47090

Comment

After a morning shower the Fairy Wrens were out and about feeding on the grasses. I got down as low as I could to be more at eye level with these tiny little birds and liked the way the rain drops were clinging to the grasses and the soft blurred effect of the rain drops in the background. I changed this to a B&W image and just wanted feed back about what people thought of this as an image and what I could have done differently and if I should leave in colour.

I used Adobe Lightroom and used the function that changed the image to B&W, Adobe Monochrome. I have cropped the image by about a third.

The highlight setting is -100
Texture +48
Clarity +62
Sharpening which defaults to 40 and noise reduction I set to 29.

Equipment

Canon 1DX 100-400mm lens ISO 320 400mm f5.6 1/500

Location

O'Reilly's Lamington National Park, Queensland

Keywords

adult

This image is not available for download.

Con Boekel	2021-07-14 18:40:34	Hi Angela This image has some lovely elements. The use of b/w works particularly well with the water droplets. There are two approaches that you may wish to explore. The first has to do with depth of field. During image capture you have chosen a trade off: to have sharp droplets in front of the bird versus no detail in the back half of the bird and the tail. f5.6 gives you a more narrow depth of field than, say, f8. Next time The next time you are capturing images try different f settings to see what happens with your DOF. The other thing to be conscious of is the focal point, bearing in mind that you have depth of field in front of as well as behind the focal point. The second thing to explore is cropping. There is quite a bit of dead space in the image. If you wish to retain the whole bird I would shift it so that it sits one third of the way from the left edge. This leaves the bird looking into most of the space, giving it pictorial meaning. A second idea would be to explore a more radical crop down to whatever is sharp in the bird's head along with the sharp droplets to its left. kind regards Con Boekel
Charles Page	2021-07-18 13:21:52	Hi Angela. Its a lovely photo but I feel it needs more work on the B&W conversion. IMHO B&W is best when it conveys drama. You current conversion seems a bit flat and unstructured. This is always difficult because there is no single grayscale equivalent of a particular colour value. Many convertors simply take the luminance value of a particular colour and convert that to a greyscale value. So the grey value used could result in a green in the original looking the same shade of grey as a red. There are many tools that let you play with how this conversion is done, resulting in many different effects. I find you just have to have a play with the settings to find an effect you like. I use DxO Filmpack, as this has a library of conversions intended to recreate the effect of traditional photographic films, colour and B&W. the NIK Silver Efx Pro does something very similar. No doubt the LR/PS experts can advise the adjustments they have available and the equivalent settings. Have a play but for what its worth I feel it would look better with more contrast, a bit more sparkle from the water droplet highlights and perhaps a darker/moodier tone overall. That said, I'm a B&W tragic, having started in photography developing and printing my own so I may be biased.

COMPUTED.html: width="1776" height="1800"
COMPUTED.Height: 1800
COMPUTED.Width: 1776
COMPUTED.IsColor: Not printable
COMPUTED.ByteOrderMotorola: Not printable
COMPUTED.ApertureFNumber: f/5.6
COMPUTED.Thumbnail.FileType: Not printable
COMPUTED.Thumbnail.MimeType: image/jpeg
IFD0.Make: Canon
IFD0.Model: Canon EOS-1D X Mark III
IFD0.XResolution: 240/inches
IFD0.YResolution: 240/inches
IFD0.ResolutionUnit: inches
IFD0.Software: Adobe Lightroom 4.3 (Macintosh)
IFD0.DateTime: 2021:07:05 17:30:21
IFD0.Exif_IFD_Pointer: Not printable
EXIF.ExposureTime: 1/500
EXIF.FNumber: F5.6
EXIF.ExposureProgram: Aperture priority
EXIF.ISOSpeedRatings: 320
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0x8830: Not printable
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0x8832: 320
EXIF.ExifVersion: 0231
EXIF.DateTimeOriginal: 2021:06:23 22:36:13
EXIF.DateTimeDigitized: 2021:06:23 22:36:13
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0x9010: +10:00
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0x9011: +10:00
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0x9012: +10:00
EXIF.ShutterSpeedValue: 8.965784
EXIF.ApertureValue: F5.0
EXIF.ExposureBiasValue: 0
EXIF.MaxApertureValue: F5.0
EXIF.MeteringMode: Pattern
EXIF.Flash: Flash did not fire.
EXIF.FocalLength: 400mm
EXIF.SubSecTimeOriginal: 55
EXIF.SubSecTimeDigitized: 55
EXIF.ColorSpace: Not printable
EXIF.FocalPlaneXResolution: 1866.6666564941
EXIF.FocalPlaneYResolution: 1866.6666564941
EXIF.FocalPlaneResolutionUnit: Not printable
EXIF.CustomRendered: Not printable
EXIF.ExposureMode: Automatic Exposure
EXIF.WhiteBalance: Automatic White Balance
EXIF.SceneCaptureType: Unknown
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0xA431: 075034000054
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0xA432: Not printable
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0xA434: EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM
EXIF.UndefinedTag:0xA435: 8750000806

	211/283 in Critique Gallery
	56/1297 by Angela Farnsworth
	212/364 of Superb Fairy-wren
	715/1061 of Fairy-wrens, Emu-wrens and Grasswrens
	22527/34508 Overall
Use the arrows at the left and Right hand side of this page to display the Next/Previous photographs in that group, or click on one of the blue links above to start a slide show in that group (group slide shows are only allowed if there are less than 1000 images in the group).

CONTACT US

The easiest way to contact us is by emailing us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The Our People page, in the About Us section, contains email links to each of the committee members.

Copyright © BirdLife Photography 2016-23. Website design and programming by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Website Administrator: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..