Now that you have all seen it, (embarassment extreme), is the image OK without a catch light in the eye? It was taken in direct sun and the angle of the head caused a shadow in a dark area. It wouldn't pose like the Arizona Hummingbird did. Taken with a Minolta 800si, Tokina AT-X 304 AF 300mm F4 APO set full open, Speed not recorded, Kodak Max 800.

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 29, 1998

Answers

Ben,

It needs more than a catchlight, it needs the face to be visible.

To answer your question though, catchlights are always necessary to give an image of an animal or person "life".

You can use a flash on very low power manual setting to provide catchlights, many times without even changing the subject lighting. In this case I would have opted for TTL fill-flash.

Keith

-- Keith Clark (ClarkPhotography@spiritone.com), December 29, 1998.

Keith is right that the face should be more distinguisable.

A catch light in the eye is really easy to add in Photoshop (and I don't mean to start an ethics debate: personally I don't see the difference between using a flash gun and using Photoshop) - even if you don't like the idea of it at least you can try it and see if you prefer the image. I tried it with your image but there is so little detail in the face that it doesn't really work.

-- David Adams (da@Dsc.net), January 02, 1999.