Clay-colored sparrow

[Ron Conlon]

A beautiful day with increased diversity of waterfowl with the arrival of fall migrants. A pair of bald eagles sat in a dead tree in the center of the wetlands for several hours, eliciting a scattering of ducks whenever one of the eagles took flight.

A small group of clay-colored sparrows basked in the setting sun. This is the eastern edge of their range, so we were fortunate to see them. I was able to move to get the sun at my back, but could not move as close as I would have liked.

Cropped to less than one third of the original pixel count, 2 small out-of-focus plant bits cloned out, bird sharpened in places.


Canon T2i; 400 mm f/5.6L
1/400 s; f/5.6; 400 iso
10/27/13; Sandy Ridge Reservation, Lorain Co, OH

[Sandy Witvoet]

Hi Ron! This cutie is way sweet! Great perch, super bg, good detail, lovely comp. I'd be tempted to get rid of the green leaf that is under.... ahem ... his "behind"!

[P-A. Fortin]

Lovely image. I like the perch and the way we see the bird's feet. Well composed along with a pleasing background. Nice catchlight also. Focus seems to be on the right place as well.

You say you had the sun at your back. Since I see some shadows on the bird, I guess there was some kind of folliage or branches in the light's path? Could some fill-flash have helped? (If you have one of course... Not everyone is willing to spend 500$ on a 580 ex ii!). Have you tried lifting shadows a bit while doing your processing?

Speaking of processing, I would give another run of noise reduction on the background. Since there are no details there, you can be quite agressive. But don't touch the bird or the perch!

Of course, image quality suffered a little bit from the strong crop, but actually not as much as I would have expected.

Good job on the cloning, I can't find where you did it. A matter of taste: I might have tried to remove the small leaf next to the left foot.

I am as bad as it gets when it comes to sparrow ID, but could this be a juvenile white-crowned instead of a clay-colored?


Good job. Thanks for sharing.

[Ron Conlon]

You say you had the sun at your back. Since I see some shadows on the bird, I guess there was some kind of folliage or branches in the light's path? Could some fill-flash have helped?

Speaking of processing, I would give another run of noise reduction on the background. Since there are no details there, you can be quite agressive. But don't touch the bird or the perch!

I am as bad as it gets when it comes to sparrow ID, but could this be a juvenile white-crowned instead of a clay-colored?


Thanks!
There was some foliage blocking the path of the light, thus the dappling. Unfortunately I didn't have my flash with me.

I didn't feel I had the skill to remove the leaf underneath the bird--I will give it a try, as that is the only way to get better.

I don't have complete confidence in the ID, but I don't think it is a juvenile. The bunch of them looked like this.

[Sandy Witvoet]

P-A.... didn't closely look for ID.... I think Juve White-crowned is very likely, especially during Fall migrations here in the Midwest... This one is lacking the moustache and "buffi-ness" of the Clay... I'd go Imm White Crowned here..... regardless...super capture! (I usually only see these guys on the ground!)

[P-A. Fortin]

I didn't feel I had the skill to remove the leaf underneath the bird--I will give it a try, as that is the only way to get better.


As I said, it's a matter of taste. Give it a try. If you like it better, great. If not, then you will at least get more experience at cloning out stuff :)

[Ron Conlon]

P-A.... didn't closely look for ID.... I think Juve White-crowned is very likely, especially during Fall migrations here in the Midwest... This one is lacking the moustache and "buffi-ness" of the Clay... I'd go Imm White Crowned here..... regardless...super capture! (I usually only see these guys on the ground!)

I am with you after going back to my Sibley's--Thanks!

[Ron Conlon]

A reworking. I tend to use photoshop and the NR there never seems to get rid of all the noise, so I used as mild a lens blur as I could to the BG. Am I missing something?

Interesting that the blurring vastly reduces the file size (I had trouble getting under the size limit previously).

[P-A. Fortin]

Not to get too much into technical details, but file size reduction is normal. Compression algorithms encode data by using fewer bits for the most common values of your document and more bits for the less common values. So the fewer different pixel values you have in an image, the smaller filesize. As such, a 100% uniform image image (e.g. white) would give the smallest file size. Since noise reduction smoothens (is that actually a word? My english is.. well.. what it is) the image, it reduces pixel value variations, which results in more common pixel values and smaller file size.

If the base image is noisy, photoshop will not be able to perform miracles. Yet it does a pretty good job especially on smooth backgrounds such as this one.

On your repost, it seems you blurred your perch, and even the bird's left foot. I would suggest not doing that. Since the perch is at the same distance as the bird, you would expect the perch (or at least the part of it which is within the dof) and especially parts of the bird to be on focus.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Nice, Ron... you cleanly eliminated the "butt-leaf" ... agree that you should keep the perch in more focus. Very sweet!

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ron, I really like the warm BKG to this, it really sets the subject of nicely. The 'perch' is well balance (in size) with the subject and I also like the placement within frame/HA. Personally I think you need to look at more DOF say around f/8-9 but this then is dependent on ISO & SS, as you need to keep a reasonable SS for here guys as I assume they can move fast at times.

Certainly a tad more sharpening on the subject, I would watch the brighter highlight in the chest and you could just open up the eye and the dark crest on the hard a fraction more to bring a bit more detail out.

TFS
Steve

[Diane Miller]

Neat Image or Nik's Dfine are often excellent for noise reduction, and they will often leave the subject with no perceptible softening while doing wonders for a featureless but noisy BG. I do them on a separate layer so I can mask out the subject if needed.

I didn't see what processing you are using, but for a RAW capture, recent versions of LR or ACR have Shadows and Highlights sliders that allow more detail to be brought into dark and light areas. I think it would be interesting to see what they would do for this very pleasing image.