Pine Warbler

[Nancy Cooke]

Pine Warblers were visiting our suet feeder on a cloudy day this spring. First post. Hoping for critical and helpful comments.

20D
500mm
ISO 200
f/7.1
1/200
Canvas added on left.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Welcome aboard Mme. Cooke!

Beautiful species here, one that I have nothing on...yet. The glance back pose is nice. The blown "knob" near the foot is unfortunate, as is the semi-lit / semi-shadowed perch. Beautiful BG, but be careful of clone marks when fiddling with it (such as the "+" shaped mark in the upper left corner). Keep them coming!! :-)

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Nancy,
I'm with the tighter croppers........you could take some off to maximize impact. As daniel said, the bright spot on the perch is unfortunate.........but correctable,
Roman

[Nancy Cooke]

I tried to quick mask the bright spot out -- didn't like it, foot didn't look right. I tried to decrease the highlights through "color range" and adjust levels, didn't work well for me. How to do this?

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Your little bird is in a nice pose! The fact it's looking back towards you makes this a nice image, otherwise lack of eye contact is usually a killer. You could maybe try and work on the whites via the Selective color adjustment option.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nancy, there are afew ways to do this, but here is how I achieved it here. Selected the offending bright part (you could Quick Mask it, but I used the Lasso tool in this case) I then selected the clone stamp tool, used a brush size about as thick as the thickest part of the perch, set opacity to 18%, and cloned in some bark from underneath the foot, and elsewhere along the perch. In total maybe 3-4 clone "stamps from various areas. I also darkened parts of the bird, and fixed the mark atin ULC. Did not bother with shaded area of perch as it is too dark to rescue it effectively or timely.

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Nancy,
I like the colors of the first one. The bright spot on the perch does not bother me, but Mr. Bird is a wee bit too centered for my taste...:D