Snipe Hunt w/ Repost

Great capture, but a little dark. I would lighten this one up quite a bit. It should then pop, with that nice background.

Hi Jim,

I like the pose and composition of your snipe photo.  Looks dark on my monitor--a slight brightening up of the plumage and eye leaving the bill as is would be my only suggestion.  Other than that, I like what you've done here........................Jim

Nice bird, nice background. As presented it is very dark. 

Great pose, perch, background, and detail.

I agree with Jerry's comments.  Great bg.

Excellent background and comp to showcase the snipe, Jim. As others have noted, this a a tad dark, but that's an easy fix.

Nice, Jim.  I agree with the other comments on lightening the bird even though I know it's back lit.

I used Levels to pull up the whites and did some selective brightening as well. The image is brighter but isn't what I photographed in the field.

Let me know what you think.

My sense is that the contrast differential between the snipe and background remains the same.  I like the brightness in the snipe in the repost, but would consider darkening the background to give the bird more pop.

Richard Ditch offered this advice on one of my posts and it seems to work: 
"I agree about the brightness of the BG. Try this - select the starling, invert the selection to get everything else, and with the inverted selection active add a new adjustment layer. It doesn't matter which type as you aren't going to make any adjustments. Just set the blend mode for the new layer to Multiply and that will darken everything but the starling. Then pull down the intensity to about 50%."

Or in this case it might be easier to do a hue/saturation layer and darken the green background.

I tend to agree with Allen on this one, Jim.  I agree that the repost isn't what you saw in the field, but faithful representations don't always make the best images.  It depends on whether you're trying to document what you saw or create a pleasing image-they don't always agree.  I usually select the bird and put it on a separate layer for sharpening. In cases like this where I might want to make selective adjustments to brightness or saturation, it's easy to adjust both the bg layer and the bird layer to get the results I like.  Sometimes I combine the perch with the bird layer and sometimes not.

Nice pose and background. Love these guys ! A may agree with Jerry that the image could use maybe a little more light. Other than that, a fine image . Cheers, Hans

I often face this choice as well - keep the image as close to what I recall from the field, or optimize it for web presentation. I've drifted more to optimizing the image these days.

I like the brighter presentation of the snipe in the repost, and I don't mind the brightness of the background. But it could go darker to make the lightened snipe stand out a little more.

Repost looks better.However BG and perch have got highlighted.For local changes NIK software comes in handy.

Regardless of which way you go Jim, it is a nice image.  I agree about the use of Nik Software Color Effects 4 using the pro contrast filter first to see where that would take you.

Hi Jim, I like this image a lot. I agree that the repost really improved the plumage of the bird and that the bg brightness could be toned down a touch if you felt like it. The open beak and one legged pose are very cool. Nice work!

Jim:

The repost is much better. I see your point about the difference between what you saw and what you posted. But I think the details in your repost are much better and that is a good reason to brighten the scene. While our eyes can spot details even in a darker scene, some of it is lost when it comes through the camera which has a lower dynamic range and needs some post-processing to retrieve it. Also second others' suggestion on darkening the background. A fine image, nonetheless.

I don't mind the background color in the repost.  You could have achieved both a lighter bird and a darker background by using some fill flash in the field.