Hummingbirds

Then white balance corrected for excessive gel effect. Seems

to hold liveliness better than only white balance corrected with

no gel on flash? Any tips appreciated. Thanks.

Not much room to spare. Good capture!

http://photo.net/nature-photography-forum/00QLhe

I had forgotten there are legal and ethical issues surrounding photographing birds with their nests.  Having remembered, I now prefer to  leave this nest alone. 

well done!!

"A bit crowded, . . . ya think!"

Nice details Charles! A shot you don't see often, nice find.

Probably my monitor, but appears just a wee bit overexposed.

Regards,

Jim j.

Thank you Pekka and Jim.  It does look like the nest is forcing them out, a natural solution to the problem of 'youth'.  I don't feel like I've done the best that could be done with this opportunity, in capture or processing.  Yet I see from the photo.net discussion that trying again might put the youngsters at risk, and feel a bit stupid for hammering them and the parent with flash while they were being fed.  This nest is just to the side of a fairly busy paved walking path and is visited daily by people.  It is in the lower twigs of a dried out tree and amazingly survived some recent wind and rain, unusual for late March/April in the LA coastal area.  Off camera flash may have been the lighting solution....  I'm not that excited about disturbing them again. 

Charles, I think your shot has enough information to work with as far as PP goes. As another noted, to my eyes it's a tad overexposed .33 stop or so. I feel the color range and saturation on the birds themselves is spot on, so just darkening the image up won't do it. Not knowing your software or knowledge of it (keep in mind I am rather new to digital PP as well) I'll keep it basic.

To start, I would play around with shadow/highlight balance and minor midtone contrast settings to give the image some tone depth. From there, add a touch of sharpening to the eyes and orbital areas on the birds. Use your burn tool to darken the nest edge some to better separate it from the birds (subltey is the key). Also, I think you can slightly crop the bottom to unclutter it a bit. More extensive work (and possibly not to your taste) would be cloning the right side green areas and eliminating the out of focus branch clutter on the left side. Nice shot, hope this helps!

Regards, Randall

Very nice catch Charles! Hard to get a clear shot like this with nesting Hummer. Congrats! I would have closed down the lens for more DOF though.

Btw, I don't see anything wrong with photographing nesting birds as long as one keeps the distance and don't disturb them. After all, if the bird nested right in the backyard then he/she is tresspassing in the first place and at least should pay for the clean up with a shot, LOL!

Thanks Tm.  I felt better today since they have fledged despite all the human attention they have attracted.  I agree the depth of field is too shallow and so today I used a shorter lens.

Randall:  thank you for taking the time with the specific recommendations.  I do have PSE and a book on using it:  a bit over my head for now, though I am looking forward to using all the techniques you mention.  On these particular birds, I decided to start all over with new captures using a shorter focal length lens and flash diffuser.  I'm much happier with the newer shots.  Charles