Eastern Bluebird

[Steve Wasson]

Canon 7D, Sigma 150-500mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1/250; Speedlite 430EX II, manual @ 3/4 power w/Better Beamer; handheld. LR4, CS5, Cropped from landscape to portrait.

Hiked a local park and found lots of Bluebirds flocking for migration. Winter is on its way to Minnesota!

[Joe Senzatimore]

Great BG to offset a beautiful species. Like the way the perch forms a great diagonal.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Very nice pose and colors. I like that you didn't oversaturate the image. I would think that a bit of selective sharpening on the bluebird head would help quite a bit.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Good call on the vertical comp, but I feel you need to put the subject a bit more of the left of the frame. Nice perch, BG, and of course the subject. Whites on the belly seem a tad bright and some hotspots (or close to it) are starting to appear there.

[Don Nelson]

I agree with Daniel on white hotspots on belly. Not much detail is recoverable via linear burn(s) but some showed up.
I'dalso sharpen the bird, and would also slightly saturate the birds colors only using a little sponge tool.
Something like this is what I am suggesting (I'll leave it to you to fine tune if you wish):
119363

[Frank Schauf]

Beautiful portrait, great details and eye contact, Steve.

[Marina Scarr]

Repost is much better in terms of processing. Nice colors, details and IQ. I would recrop if you can trying to keep the bird out of the center. I would put him more to the left of the frame if you have the space.

[Nico Steenberg]

super sharp and well exposed IMG. I like the eye contact and the bg is a killer. Well done !