Critique Request - Digital Effects On High Speed Flash Hummingbird Photo

Gregory, honestly, I AM JEALOUS!!! Fantastic.

i don't care much for the brush marks. i would brighten the background a little and boost the greens and blues a bit. maybe dodge the head, throat and tail a little bit. if your going to digitally add anything, i would add a larger eye glint.

i don't know what your flash looks like, but maybe a larger square head, or a larger circle will give it a better glint.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

LOVE it myself

I am with JC on this one, it is a beautiful image. I don't find the brush marks offensive, they appear as motion blur to me which would make sense to a casual viewer of the image.

You got great detail but I am seeing a squared off section behind the head that doesn't look natural.

The added Topaz treatment neither helps or hurts the image. It is a cold, academic, sterile photo. There should be callouts with lines going to the various body parts.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

So beautiful! What isn't to like?? :)

The detail is great, brush strokes are fine, but the head looks 'stuck on'? maybe it's the angle of the feathers but that doesn't look right, also where are the little feet? I would prefer something in the background, it does make it a bit sterile with no background.

Louise and Melissa: I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I'm guessing there is a right-angle formed above the back of the neck by the flared feathers. If that's what you are referring to, that's a natural attribute in the unedited photo. I've seen rare shots of a Calliope Hummingbird, who flares his gorget feathers in a way reminiscent of when the Girl Ghost tried to pick up tiny Beetlejuice in the movie. It's quite a threat/territorial/mating display, and I have always wondered if the flaring of the feathers in this photo is based on the same sort of behavior. I've often seen Annas flare their gorget in a similar manner. There's nothing artificial about it, but it is quite uncommon for this species, which lacks a strongly differentiated gorget, for that matter. As for me, this only adds interest to this photo, and makes it unique in my portfolio. This is clearly what makes it look "like his head was stuck on". To me it's interesting, and I would never consider a head transplant. But because it occurred to you, obviously it can be annoying.

Dan - I guess you just don't like high speed flash with an artificial background. It is art that perhaps a physicist and mathematician might enjoy. But naturalists may enjoy this too. The lack of a background (and a flower) is compensated for by my motto: "The bird, the whole bird, and nothing BUT the bird!". Or is that a self deprecation? Whatever. For technical reasons, it's difficult to make natural backgrounds look good under high speed flash illumination, and it is incredibly difficult to get well composed backgrounds on this subject. It's not like you can compose. "Bird, hover over there in that precise spot, and hold your wings in a V at this angle..." Under high speed flash, black is the "natural" background. Some people use painted or flat photographic backgrounds, but I tend NOT to like the results with these.

Mike - I had 4 flash heads, with 4 highlights in the eye in the original photo. I removed 3 of them, but didn't "diffuse" the eye highlight because the sharp highlight is consistent with the generally harsh, very specular lighting. Perhaps diffusing the remaining highlight would help soften the overall mood, and slightly help Dan's objections. I've done that on other photos, and my personal reaction has been mixed. I'll consider adding that change to this image.

You could always really freak them out and drop it onto a natural background, would be really easy with the white a simple trip to the blending modes in Photoshop would do it quite nicely. :)

Rick, I often do this, but it can be amazingly hard to get a natural looking cutout, even with the solid white background. I have two hummingbird portfolios. Many of the "Hummingbird WITH flowers" portfolio shots have an edited background. A few are nearly seamless, but this is much more difficult than most people imagine. There should usually be a transition zone of from 0 to 3 to 50 or more pixels where colors blend from background to bird. (wings are partially transparent (lacy due to tiny holes in feather structure, so the transition zone can be the entire wing, potentially). Here's a fairly seamless example:



An odd thing here: This photo is too dark and muted as displayed here. Click the photo to see it better represented on its primary page.

Without zooming in, I love it. Zooomed in, ... not as much. The thin-line brush marks are sort of a let down, because I expected to see smooth color gradients giving the overall coloring effect that I observe in the distant view.

There is what first appears to my eye to be a bit of a smudge near the beak tip that posed some distraction for me, even on the distant view.

But my first impression, ignoring all this, was wow!

"Cold, academic, sterile" ... is a bit incomplete, I think, given that the natural beauty of this beast is anything but these traits. A cold, academic, sterile shot isolates precisely and shows off this beauty.

"I guess you just don't like high speed flash with an artificial background."

Gregory, that's an interesting conclusion. I didn't critique how you did it, only the end result.

"it is incredibly difficult to get well composed backgrounds on this subject."

And yet others are doing it on a daily basis. I suspect examples of really outstanding hummingbird photos would be unwelcome in this thread. I urge you to put "hummingbird" in the search box. You will find some fantastic birds, filled with motion, clarity and life, against some truly stunning backgrounds. To see amazing hummingbird fine art photography, look for the artist who's initials are C.R.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

Here is a new variant, now my preferred version, personally, taking some of the advice to heart. (I may add a background and flower later.)
I've eliminated the simulated brush strokes, and slightly warmed the colors, and used a larger eye highlight, but otherwise, this is minimally edited, with just the usual tweaks to color, saturation, detail, sharpness, contrast, and exposure. Please let me know if you like this better than any of the above versions, or not.




Click here to see it at full resolution and full quality (Adobe 12) but with a watermark. Click again in your browser to magnify for full resolution.

Next I'll work on a version with some sort of background, but there are lots of problems, which I will discuss when I post the result.

While you anxiously await that version, I have a "challenge" for you all, if you like puzzles. This version in this high resolution link, and the previous show another "mystery" edit I did not discuss, which might be a particular issue with JC. If you care to try to discover what I'm talking about, I will reveal that with my next post to this thread, also.

Dan, those folks with good backgrounds you refer to are not shooting at F16 to 22 to get maximum wingtip sharpness as I am. (You don't need huge DOF if the wings will be blurry anyway, obviously.) This is an consequence of a deliberate choice to use high speed flash technique on these photos, in an attempt to show maximum detail on the bird. This shot is a "worst case" instance for that objective, because the wings are mid-stroke, at their maximum wing-tip velocity. It's a compromise choice, as is every other choice in photography. Increasing something always decreases something else. I love a shot with good background bokah and blurry wings, but that's not my niche, for now. Yes, we have several masters of that technique here at FAA, as you noted, and Christine Rollo is definitely one of them, if I spelled her name right. Laura Ellis is another, as I recall.

You can also see that the slight ghosts of the wings have shown up in this shot. In this case. I feel that they add to a sense of motion, as I believe I mentioned before, but it is more apparent in this variant edit for this image.

You upsized the first one. Knowing that the ruffle of the feathers is normal helps, I'm certainly no expert on hummers. In fact I'd be looking for you if I had a question on them! I like the second version better but maybe not so many reflections in the eye. Either version I will admit to having camera resolution detail envy on the feathers because mine will not do that unless it's a dead bird and I can get a macro of it. Downside of having a bridge camera...course it could be partly the operator ;o)

Melissa gets the puzzle prize. I was upsizing the image to see if this would, in turn, downscale the brushes (in relative terms) used by Topaz Impressions. If you downsize the brushes in Impressions too far, you end up with gaps between the brush strokes, and there is evidently no way to increase the density of brush strokes when using a tiny paintbrush. I'm all "meh" about the results of the brushwork, personally. I'm going with the second major version.

Here is link to a high resolution high quality "rough draft" of the second version, with a cut and paste job added to get a background. I'm under-whelmed.


If you look at the details, it's rather unconvincing, and I worked on it for an hour. My shop-fu went kerflooey. It would take me hours more of hand editing to get the image better, and then it would only be marginally better. And I'm orders of magnitude better at cut/paste/blend than just 2 years ago. I'm a decent photographer, and a horrible painter, and such a blend requires some good painting skills.

So if I want natural backgrounds, I'll have to forgo the use of high speed flash and my penchant for maximum detail, in pragmatic terms. Fill flash could work, perhaps, but not full-montey-high-speed-flash (Sorry about the unfortunate word imagery there.)

Melissa, I agree that maybe in the previous version I should probably blur out the highlights more. They were formerly 3 distinct highlights, with the 4th removed completely in this version, and the remaining 3 blurred/painted together somewhat. It needs a more natural look. Once upon a time, dearly beloved, most highlights, particularly in cartoons, were drawn as the reflection of a multi-pane window.

With regard to "natural backgrounds", these birds are photographed in the high desert "sky islands" in southeast Arizona. At the time of migration, and shooting, there are NO natural flowers blooming in this location. Several miles away at lower altitude, you occasionally get some blooming Ocotillo in middle March, but the main bloom is early April in these locations. This is the original natural trigger for the SE AZ hummingbird migration. The natural migration has been modified by many many years of bird feeders in Madera Canyon, Cave Creek, and other birding locations in SE AZ. Much like bluebirds, barn swallows, and purple martins, and some other cavity nesting birds, hummingbirds are also quite dependent on their adaptations to the human-modified environment. (No, hummingbirds are not cavity nesters. They build elegant tiny nests using mostly spider webs. Sometime the web catches the bird and the spider eats the bird, usually the hummingbird uses the web and may eat the spider.

What!!?? What the hell kind of spider is eating a bird? No...nevermind...I don't really want to know. I'll probably have nightmares, my imagination goes into overdrive sometimes when it's bedtime.

The background is just not doing it for me - instead of using a white cardboard background, what about something with some sort of bokeh effect that would mimic a nice creamy natural background? People do this with flowers all the time to fake some nice bokeh - scrapbooking paper works fantastically well. Maybe just experiment with it? Just seems a bit lifeless and dull (as in color).

Ordinary yellow and black garden spiders Argiope aurantia, among others. (They're pretty big.)
Preying mantis, also. There are even some mantis species colored like orchids in the tropics, the better to entice you with, my dear.
Here in the US, they just wait on your hummingbird feeder. Remove them if you find them!
Hang your feeders high, to avoid the cats that may learn to lurk beneath.

Don't do a Google image search, Melissa. Sweet dreams.

}:-D

I can avoid a search! I did a screenshot and added an example background for curiosity's sake. Okay to show or send it to you?

sure. does Pixels/FAA message system do attachments?

I have no idea!
attempting to email through your home circle email. nope, didn't work

no, can't do attachments and the email on your website bounced. Either need your email or I can put it here.

home ainacircle xrexscoyy.com

x=g
y=t

decode!

home@gregscott.com. I'll edit this out after a while...

you can also put it in thread with html.

or I could do this! That is the email I decoded on your website and it bounced back Mailbox quota exceeded deleted email

Gregory, I do love the original image and if it was mine and I wanted a deliberate digital version I would abstract it to a minimal extent for interest. Sort of like this I did, but not quite so much for such a delicate bird as a hummingbird. I have sold a rather large print of this so please don't think images this strange won't sell. It's ok if it's not to your taste :)

Thank you both. As I ponder this image I'll consider both approaches.

I'm not sure either is a style that suits yours but it does give you some possibilities :o)

Here's one with a softer background, I like better - just gives it a little bit of interest without competing with the bird.

Ooh, I like that one best, Melissa. I'll have to try to mimic that. Off to search for good textures in my archives...

Gregory S.,

The actual bird is soooo much better in the later version. The close-up now jives in my eye with my first impression of "wow". Great job.

The rose background seems like a decent fix. Maybe this alone might help remedy Dan. T.'s "cold-sterile" sense of it.

Melissa B.'s second background rendition seems closer to the best direction. Notice the greenish tint - I think this is what helps it, because it harmonizes with the greenish tint of the bird.

So, my miniscule attempt at advising [audience laughs] might be ... "maybe think GREEN (instead of red) for the background. I bet Dan T. wants to see blurry foliage, but there IS none where you shot this. I was thinking (jokingly to myself) of using a large-scale print of green plants as a background, since blurring of the macro depth of field might trick viewers into NOT being able to tell the difference between that and the real thing.

I am a color-harmony addict, so again ... green against a different tint-saturation-dominance of green is my best suggestion. Subtly mirror the colors in the main subject. This is what Melissa B. seems to be doing. Yea, as I look closer, this is exactly what she is doing, whether she realizes it or not.

Nope, it was intentional. My first thought was something more in the orange range to balance the green, but the more I looked at my first rendition I realized it was too too busy and kinda 'brash' so I backed off a couple of steps I did originally back to the softer pale mint tinted version with just a touch of the warmer earth (orange) tone.

Melissa's green background helps, but the ultimate problem lies with the lifeless, flat bird. If it had pins in it, it might pass as a mounted specimen for a textbook. There's no way to put enough lipstick on this to make it work as art.


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

"Flatness" is not a stand-alone quality - it depends on the subject and the background relationship. The bird, I suggest, is not flat by itself, but maybe made to look flatter by the sort of background it is on.

I would like a link to a particular picture of a hummingbird that you think is NOT flat - an active link that I can just click on to find.

The bird WAS alive when the photograph happened, so "lifeless" seems a little extreme. It looks alive to me. I might agree that it is on a lifeless, flat background, but to attribute the background's qualities exclusively to the bird alone is a stretch for me.

I believe that there IS a "lipstick" maneuver that could turn it around in Dan T.'s eyes. Maybe some shading in the bird, some background harmonizing with that shading, shadows, color gradient shifts, and other stuff that I don't even know how to do to weave it into the background organically

We can create a sense of depth and dimensionality in paint on flat cloth canvas, so why not with digital brushes on digital canvas?.

"I would like a link to a particular picture of a hummingbird that you think is NOT flat - an active link that I can just click on to find."

Awright, awright. Behold....





Magnificent!


Dan Turner
Dan Turner's Seven Keys to Selling Art Online

Here is typical landscape from the region where and when I photographed this bird. Not a flower in sight for miles and miles, but many, many hummingbirds:

Gregory, what brings them there and what are they eating?

For many years, people have been feeding the birds at these locations. One species even overwinters at Cave Creek, the location pictured above. About few years back, a particularly cold winter killed off most of the over-wintering magnificent (species name) hummingbirds there. The main migration of most of the species coincides pretty will with the bloom of the Ocotillo bush, also called the Devil's Walking stick. It has clusters of reddish-orange flowers, but generally grows at a lower altitude, maybe around 4000 feet. The Portal AZ foreground location in the photo above is at about 4800 feet in elevation, and the closest Ocotillo I have found is about 40 miles away, at about 4400 feet, near Douglas, AZ.

Hummingbirds need more than flower nectar to live. They also get fat, protein, and other nutrients from eating flying insects, and insects they may find in the flowers where they feed. There are NO mosquitoes that I can report at the time and location when these bird appear in the spring, so I presume they are living off of fat reserves. That doesn't explain the overwintering magnificents, though. That's a puzzle to me. I theorize that humans have modified the birds natural pattern. These "sky island" locations have been birding hot-spots for many, many years, and continual use of bird feeders has undoubtedly altered the birds' migration and habitation patterns.

In a similar way, bluebirds are almost totally dependent on people who provide nest boxes, and meal worms. Likewise, purple martins and barn swallows rely heavily on rural farmers who hang gourds or other fancier birdhouses for these cavity nesting species. (Many people don't let dead wood stand, removing important habitat from the native species' resources.) Farmers know how many insects these birds consume, and attempt to help them, and that is where you will find many cavity nesting birds these days.

When camped in these locations, when they were not in bear zones, I learned to drip the blood from my uncooked steak onto a rock to attract flies and gnats, which are present at that time of year. This was particularly attractive to the Painted Redstarts (a robin-like bird), but may have been helpful to hummingbirds. I have heard that some people leave banana peels hanging for fruit flies, which in turn are ideal for hummingbirds, but I've never tried that myself.

In summary, people have been feeding hummingbirds nectar in feeders for at least 50 years, and this has undoubtedly favored birds who migrate early in the season.

In late march, honey bees often swarm the hummingbird feeders, but this is NOT helpful to them, as they avoid bees, whose sting can kill them.

Later in the season, April and into May, bluebonnets are abundant, and a whole succession of other flowers, particularly at the higher altitudes above 1 mile. More abundant rainfall at about a mile elevation earns these mountains the name "sky islands", and they have a totally different ecosystem than the low and middle desert. It is these islands that are the regional destination for many hummingbird species.

Interesting info here, Greg. I have never been to those places but understand why it would be attractive.
Curious about the Magnificent...and hope that they can somehow adapt to those particularly cold temps.

I have been seeing a lot of Rufous the last week or so. They are so incredibly aggressive for such a teeny hummer! (Makes me want to run and hide, no kidding!) There is an interesting read about them at: hummingbirdsplus.org. Bob Sargent writes about the Rufous and their adaptation to extremely cold temperatures and are found to be buzzing around looking for food at 0 degrees. Quite amazing.

Your image puts me in mind of a botanical illustration, Greg. It's so perfect it almost doesn't seem real. The only thing that put me off about the first photograph was the redness of the beak but you corrected that in the second example. I like Melissa's second version with the textured background. I'd also add some contrast or shading to give it a sense of depth.

Interesting info about hummingbirds' feeding habits. I actually knew that insects were a big part of their diet but it never occurred to me to try to attract fruit flies, for example. I'm going to have to try that. We've got a bunch in the kitchen right now...just need to move them outdoors.

For the first winter ever we've had Anna's hummingbirds visiting our feeders. The rufous hummers leave here (west coast of Canada) in August but I always left the feeders up, hoping to entice an Anna's, which I heard over winter here. One finally showed up in October. We had an extremely mild winter this year except for one early snow. I managed to get a couple of shots of the Anna's feeding at the snow-covered feeder. Not a great shot and more of a documentation than anything, but here it is...



I don't know how they manage to survive over the winter. People have been reporting that they've seen their first rufous hummers this past week...it's going to be interesting when the rufous and Anna's go to battle over the feeders. The rufous definitely are very feisty hummingbirds.

By the way, there was a Costa's hummingbird that made its way to somebody's yard two years in a row close to where I live. I understand that they're normally found in the desert in either California or Nevada. How it got to the same exact feeder two years in a row here in British Columbia is beyond me! The yard he visited happened to be the former mayor's.

Thanks, Dan T.,

As I figured, the issue is the background mostly, but in this case, such a background would have to be created, since the native habitat is NOT the beautiful green, flowers, etc. that you can blur out with a depth-of-field consideration.

Put those birds in the beautiful landscapes against a piece of cardboard, and they too would look "flat", I think.

Not sure if you are asking a question but if you are asking which one I like, the Varient is a fantastic crisp image. The digital effects dull the details especially noticed around the eyelid. To me its noticeable even without zooming in. But I'm jealous of both. The highligting around the wings and beak are a little distracting. I'm not one to criticize your work on any level but I just wanted to say the Variant shot is MOST excellent.