Baldy: A Cardinal with a background

[kenn threed]

Merry Christmas all,

This is Baldy; a male Northern Cardinal who's in his 3rd year with us here now. He has been pitifully bald thruout every summer with us so far, but always seems to recover his head feathers each fall. In this recent shot he's proudly flexing his newly regained crest:
http://kenn3d.smugmug.com/Nature/Birds-Blossoms-Butterflies-VOL/cardinal9334c/743641033_ehJ9z-X3-2.jpg
Canon S3-IS + 1.7xTC (equivalent:735mm) Manual ISO100 F3.5 1/125

Nothing is added or removed, but I've softened and darkened the original (busy suburban) background.
I'd appreciate any comments you might offer, especially on whether this processing works or not.

Kenn

Kenn & Temple
Backyard Birders in St.Louis, MO
Current Slideshow (http://kenn3d.smugmug.com/photos/swfpopup.mg?AlbumID=6975191&AlbumKey=qAczM)

[arash_hazeghi]

lovely colors and BG, detail is nice too, would clone out the oof twig in lower left, just wish for more head turn.

[David Fletcher]

Beautiful bird Ditto Arash's thoughts.

[Allen Sparks]

Kenn, you have captured this bird in wonderful light. good job! I will also echo Arash's comments.

[Peter Farrell]

Kind of an akward pose, but well captured. The reddish area in the BG above his head is a little distracting.

[kenn threed]

lovely colors and BG, detail is nice too, would clone out the oof twig in lower left, just wish for more head turn.

Thanks all for your comments,

This was shot in late afternoon @4pm with the setting sunlight already way off-angle to his right. I took several bursts (29 frames) while he was perched there and selected this one as the best overall pose. There were a few with his head turned more toward me, but none with both better HA and workable light/shadow I fear.
My own critique might also include the little motion blur of his splitting crest, as the shutter was quite slow.

Here's the repost with the small branch in LLC cloned away, selected desat of the orange and repair of the very dark bg area in the URC:
http://kenn3d.smugmug.com/photos/749335632_YHiQw-X3.jpg

I do believe these edits have helped some. Thanks again for your feedback. :)

Kenn

[Harshad Barve]

Lovely pose , techs looks good and repost works fine here
Merry Christmas & happy holidays
TFS