Cooking and cleaning a hummingbird

Hummers are appetizing little creatures, with built in toothpicks. Maybe that's why they're extinct in Europe :-).

But I'm referring to shooting them with my d70, and cleaning them up for visual enjoyment. You can't always get good exposures on these unpredictable, fast fliers, so post processing is a must. Here's the unprocessed original, just cropped and downsized.

I was in a hurry, so I cropped, cloned out the feeder tube and one catchlight, adjusted levels, and sharpened.

Looking at it a few days later, I realized I had done the picture an injustice. This time I removed the color cast, did a more thoughtful job of adjusting levels, and a better job of selective sharpening.

I think it's greatly improved. The lessons I learned are to be more patient about showing my pics, and more thorough with the post processing.

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Warm regards, Uncle Frank
FCAS Charter Member, Hummingbird Hunter, Egret Stalker
Dilettante Appassionato
Gallery at http://www.pbase.com/unclefrank/nikon