Flowers in the way

[Stan Cunningham]

This is an ash throated flycatcher I took in May. I've cropped it to bring the bird closer to the viewer. My question is (are)
Is there any thing I can do about the flower in before it's head? I'm not that good with CS5 but I'm willing to learn.
And because of that imperfection, would you leave it out of large group of photos I'm presenting to some magazines for possible sale?
This is really one of my problems since I started getting serious over a year ago, what is a "marketable" photo?
Thanks for your replies
Canon 50D 100 - 400L, ISO 320 F 9 1/800 about 6:20 AM.
Stan

Some how the pic wasn't attached so I'll try again.

This should work
Also, does the fact he is looking to the east (away from you) detract?

[Lance Peters]

Hi Stan - I am sure you will get lots of advice here - so in the right place. IMHO - more of a issue than the flowers is the head angle - birds head is angled well away from the viewer - needs to be angled towards us a little. You can sometimes get away with a image were a bird is looking off into the distance or at something - I dont know that this is one of those however.
I would encourage you to check out Artie's Head Angle threads here in ET for further clarification.
Looking forward to seeing more :)

[Julie Kenward]

Lance is right on the head angle but I wanted to share a few other thoughts as well...

You did a very nice job on catching detail in the feathers and leaving the flowers softly out of focus. I did notice that you just clipped the tail out of the image - be sure to watch for that next time. Always try to get the bird to fill a fair amount of the frame but leave a little extra around the edges to help with composing and cropping in the end.

Also, if you have time to make additional images the next time you have this situation, try to get an angle where the flowers are around the bird but not so close to the head. Leaving a little space there will put a nice frame around the bird without making it feel so closed in.

Very nice attempt...keep them coming!

[John Chardine]

Agree with Lance and Jules. This would be really nice if the head angle were right and the head was framed with the OOF flowers. Too bad the tail is slightly clipped. Your light source was from the left thus putting the right hand side of the subject in deep shadow. You can't always control this but if you can, try to have the sun behind you.

[John Chardine]

I came back to this one. To answer one of your questions Stan, yes you can remove the flower from the head. I used Quickmask to select some suitable feathers to clone over the flower, then used the clone tool for the BG above the head.