Gross

[Don Anderson]

This female grossbeak seems to like being photographed.
50D, 400DO, 1/2000, iso400, F7.1 handheld.

[Dan Brown]

Uh oh! no photo Don!

[Stu Bowie]

Super inquisitive pose, and the twig in the beak takes this over the top. Light, exposure and detail all good, and nice and sharp too. I would maybe run another round of NR on the BG.

[Randy Stout]

Don:

Nice coy pose here. Stick a plus. Good exposure. I actually like the bill shadow, it mimics the pattern in her breast feathers. I would consider toning down the brightness of the perch just a bit on the right side.

Agree with Stuart about NR on BG.

Thanks for sharing!

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Don:

I had a second, and brought down the brightness and contrast of the perch a bit, and sharpened her right eye.

Subtle, but I hope it focuses more attention on her, less on perch.

By the way, one s in grosbeak.::)


Randy

[David Thomasson]

I love this shot. The cocked head, direct stare, and twig make it really unique.

I would be fairly aggressive in toning down the perch, so that Miss Twiggy is the brightest element in the image.

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/9972/twiggy.jpg

[Ed Cordes]

Nice pose. The shadow on the breast does not bother me. I agree RE toning down the perch.

[Arthur Morris]

Improvement with each repost. I think that the mid-tones and darks of the bird need to be a big lighter. Love the pose and the tiny twig.

[Randy Stout]

Don:

Per Artie's suggestion. I brought up the midtones and darks of the bird a bit. Not a perfect selection, you can see a bit of halo effect, but it does demonstrate the change well I think. I have spent a lot of time looking at these girls recently, and agree with Artie about the midtones. Thanks for the advice.

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Randy. YAW. Thanks for your excellent repost. I would have preferred the perch still dark. You could have hit Control A, Control J, did the lightening and then erased the perch (and the BKGR if need be) or, did a rough selection of the bird with a QM.

[Don Anderson]

Made most of the suggested changes..
Thanks for all the suggestions..sometimes we are too close to our
own work to see the flaws.

[Randy Stout]

Don:

The only thought on your repost, I might lower the contrast in the perch. Although it is much darker, the contrast of dark and light areas still catches the eye.

Yes, the bit about too close to your own work is really true. What I try to do, is to do my work on the image to what I think looks best, put it aside and review at least a day later before I post. Give you a bit of fresh perspective. Sometimes I ignore my own rule, and often the final image suffers for it.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Don, Better on the bird--the face and head could be a bit lighter for my taste. I do prefer David Thomasson's brown perch with no contrast.

[David Thomasson]

When toning down something like this perch, multiply mode often increases contrast and saturation too much in the process of darkening. Here's a way around that. Darken instead with curves, pulling down the top end of the curve, and perhaps also the middle a bit. This will darken but leave the colors a bit bland. Add a blank fill layer in color mode to restore some life to the wood tones. You can play around with the fill color to get just the saturation you want.

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/9549/curvesf.jpg

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/2466/perch1.gif

[Don Anderson]

Thanks for the lesson.. this is only a 6x6 img for posting. any final version would
be done with more care. But I'll give it a shot