Singing in the rain

Photographed in dull light and pouring rain last weekend, the lawn was covered in snow and was acting as a giant reflector beneath the bird which had landed on top of a post that I had originally put in for a Woodpecker who failed to show, I had to stop myself from taking anymore photo's of this singing Robin who sat on top of the post singing for nearly 10 minutes

EOS 1D2, 300/2.8LIS + 2XII F/5.6 1/85 Sec ISO 400

Hi Larry,
Gorgeous bird,great pose,love the interesting perch and falling rain too.
Only problem is the bird's underside appears totally burnt out white for some reason.
No doubt just a simple processing issue.How did you process this one,raw,jpeg??

I agree with Justin, great setting but why is the underside burnt out? Did you use fill flah?
Rene de Heer

As you know Justin i'm not that great with PS so may have overcooked the saturation on the first image (trying to make a flat, dull image sparkle ) this on has been exposed slightly darker

Hello Larry

Ah you have fell for the make everything look brighter look that has crept into the digital age, when it is shown like the original exposue it is a beautiful image, the bird singing, the post, the background, the drops of rain, the dull light Some people might not like the blurred lower part of the beak but I love it, great shot



Danny

Hi Larry,
The repost looks much better,sure the light appears much duller, but that's fine as you wouldn't expect to see it any other way with all that falling rain,it's the rainy dull conditions,combined with the wonderful behavior/pose,setting/rain,etc that make the shot so naturally appealing.
I'm hardly a whiz on the PC myself but I often find that a good first step in Photoshop is to adjust the levels,what I do is hold down the Alt key while slowly moving the shadow and then the highlight sliders towards the respective start and finish points of the histogram,this will give you a preview showing when the shadows and highlights just begin to clip,this is generally a good guideline for a lot of images,as it ensures they have a black and a white point but without any necessary loss of information.

Merging both the shots would really make this good Larry. Nice pose and the rain makes it effective.

Rob

Hi Larry

Firstly a really nice composition excellent perch and great singing pose by the Robin.

I would agree with Rob that a merge between your two posts would work well, except keep the whites from the second post to avoid too much burn out.

Also your second post is in AdobeRGB format, and it also has a slight blue cast which is easily removed.

Ok a quick bash by me at merging your two posts. There is a never a right answer (unfortunately with digital) and every photo has an inifinite number of possibilities. Not like the old film days when this kind of processing was not required.

cheers

Sean

looks much better than my 2 efforts Sean, maybe you could pop over and convert / merge the other 14 images from this sequence as well how did you remove the blue cast?
Now that the wife works weekends I only get a couple of hours free to myself every week so much of what I learn one week is forgotten the next!!

Justin
I usually like to process my images in Canon DPP2 because it has a nifty command whereby you can apply the conversion settings for one image to all the rest of the images provided they are in the same folder, however since I was fortunate to get full photoshop CS2 (thanks wifey ) I have been tinkering with the raw convertor within that software which I am starting to get the hang of although I find I have to write all the settings down so that I can apply what worked to similar images in the sequence. Usually I find that everything is ok until I add some contrast that's when the detail in the whites starts to disappear

As I mentioned earlier I might reprocess the raw files for the whites and then subtly use levels and shadows highlights to lighten up the image, but keeping in mind what Danny so rightly said try not to make it look too bright. Much more work needed to get the best out of this encounter I feel?

If anyone is wondering the bright brick red shades top right is an oak branch with lovely russety leaves which is a blue tit perch situated 2 meters closer to the hide unfortuately the wind kept blowing the leaves in to shot.

Thanks

Hello Larry

Join the club in limited photoshop/processing knowledge I think Sean has got the potenial of the image spot on but it is lovely image and one I would be proud of to have in my draw (oh I meant files)

Danny

Apart from the badly blow highlights, this is one of the best robin images I've seen in a long time. Sean's repost does look better.

The robin looks like he is singing his little heart out. The rain is a very nice touch and I like the perch too.

I would be tempted to clone out the object in the top right corner, then I think you have an image worth framing on the wall, or how about the cover of the RSPB mag?

Cheers Richard

FWIW the hightlights aren't blown at all, the images just need a bit of careful processing to retain the detail in them that's all

Some really useful advice and help given. Thanks.

Be nice to see the shot after a bit of work Larry.

Graeme

Danny just plant a photogenic post/ tree stump in your back lawn (mines the remains of an old hawthorn tree that I removed from the hedgerow in one of my uncles fields) set up a small bird table near it filled to the brim with mealworks/sunflower hearts/pinhead oats put up the hide and have a few sessions. More often than not you'll have a robin on top of the post, whether or not he sings all depends on whether or not there are other Robins about. Dunnocks and Robins are always singing from high vantage points in my garden from feb onward, nearly caught the dunnock singing last week I said nearly...

I like this.
I'm torn between your original post and Sean's reworked effort. I think the brighter one is more appropriate to the robin's behaviour, but Sean's is probably the more accurate in terms of colour and what was seen. Artistic licence can throw a spanner in the works of colour by numbers.