White-crowned Sparrow

[Richard Stern]

South Rim, Grand Canyon recently. D300, Nikon 80-400 at 400mm. 1/2000, f5.6, hand-held. The background is a wooden building. Does the juniper branch in front of the bird significantly detract from the image?

Richard

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Richard,
I like the composition. There are traces of harsh light hitting your subject from the front. The white band on the head is cooked; you might want to tone it down. There is a whitish streak on the top left side of the frame that you can clone out. The perch is nice, complimenting the bird. I would suggest in opening up the eye and selective sharpen it. the colors are good. also like the background... :cool:

[Harold Davis]

i dont think it distracts too much. agree with gus on the exposure. would have been a great candidate for flash fill!!

compowise i would take a little off the bottom and add a little to the top. the wooden building made a cool bg!!!!

[Nonda Surratt]

The perch is super and the bird is nice and sharp.

Agree with Gus and 'the other guy'.

[Harold Davis]

Agree with Gus and 'the other guy'.

story of my life:cool:

[Alfred Forns]

I like it a lot and got one crop suggestion Try taking some from the bottom and left Might work fine !!!

Not bothered much by the foreground branch since its not oof !!1

[Julie Kenward]

This is really lovely. I think he feels a bit tight at the top of the frame with the horizontal crop so I tried a square crop to see what you think of it. I also cloned out the ugly branch in the bottom right corner.

Gus is right in that the white stripe is a bit "overdone" but it's a minimal thing. Correct it if you can and next time watch your histogram and make sure it stays clear of that right side edge.

You sure got a beautiful BG and the bird is nicely in focus. He looks like he's deep in thought, doesn't he? Very sweet.