Sparrow

[wendell westfall]

D90 70-200VR+2X@400 1/4000 f/9.0 ISO1000 -2/3EV handheld

I checked my images over the last week and found this one from four mornings ago, which I think I have taken at an acceptably low angle. I also wanted to present a decent looking image with only cropping, NR and Sharpening applied (in LR3). Does this one pass the test? (By the way, I don't know what kind of Sparrow it is.) I had another image of this bird that was sharper in its head area, but I liked this one's pose better.

Wendell

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Wendel,

Nice looking bird with an interesting pose. Your exposure looks pretty good and the bird has good detail. The light appears to be coming from the right creating some darker shadows on the bird. I would have preferred that the light had been more frontal (your shadow pointing at the bird). However, in this case, the head turn however puts the face in the light so I think this works. For my taste there is too much space to our left. I would crop some more the left just enough o eliminate the birds shadow in the lower left hand corner. If you are opposed to removing objects from the image, I would also crop some of the right and top to remove the dark spots in the lower right hand corner and the one at the top of the frame in the middle. I know this is a little more than the processing steps you wanted to apply but, I would try to lighten / blend in the darker strips in the background as they draw my attention away from the bird. Perhaps some dodging might be acceptable?

Thanks for sharing.

[wendell westfall]

Phil, thanks for your critique -- very helpful. I am not opposed to extensive PP, and in this case I deliberately tried to post with as little as possible modification of my original image in order to learn where others felt the original un-PPed image might be improved. Often by the time I tweak here and there critics are in the position of simply clearing up the mess I've made.

I visited your web site.The contents there were inspirational and helpful to me.

[Dave Blinder]

Hi Wendell - Did you shoot this in RAW or JPEG? I find my typical Canon RAWs often need +25 to +50 brightness adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW conversions. Not sure how that translates to Nikon processing.

[wendell westfall]

Dave, I do shoot RAW. And added Brightness (in Lightroom), as you suggested, did help the looks of my image as well . . . thanks . . .

[Dave Blinder]

Glad to help... I'm not positive but my first guess here is Savannah Sparrow.