Perched White-crowned Sparrow

[Jeff Dyck]

A White-crowned Sparrow photographed in Oxdrift, Ontario. There are a lot migrant sparrows coming through right now and they are readily coming to my feeding stations.

An obtrusive branch was cloned out above and to the right of the sparrow's head. I'm not sure about the crop on this - I don't want to crop too tight and lose the yellow background (hayfield) at the bottom.

5DmarkII -- 400L / f5.6 -- ISO400 -- f8.0 @ 1/2000s -- -1/3 EV (mistaken setting leftover from a previous shot then corrected during RAW conversion - should have been +1/3 - oops)

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[Mital Patel]

beautiful birdie and sharp details. expo is lovely. am not much lover of squeare frame though so might i be adding few pixels on left and right as well

[Paul Randall]

Agree that the square format does'nt suit this one too well. Everything else (colours, detail, perch) looks great, well done:D

[Bryan Hix]

Good sharp head/eye details. I would probably have gone for more DOF since it starts to blur fairly soon half way through the bird. I too would try another crop versus square and I almost think you could go a bit higher in exposure value since generally their crowns are white and not grayish. Was that how you remembered it? Might just be dull this time of year. I like the two toned BG.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I think the exposure is fine overall as is, but you could dodge the whites on the crown if you wish to make them lighter. Although the square crop is not as bad as implied, I agree exploring another option would be good (at least to a 4 x 5 ratio). Good details, but I have a feeling a bit more sharpening to the face and head would be advantageous. Beautiful perch with just enough lichen to make it interesting (and I love the sprinkling of yellow on it).

[Jeff Dyck]

Thanks for the feedback!

Here is the repost - I have taken Daniel's advice and applied some localized sharpening to the head and breast and I've lightly dodged the whites in the crown. I did clone out the tip of the stick at the left end of the perch as I found it quite distracting sitting at the edge of the frame.

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[Daniel Cadieux]

Subtle tweaks, but effective.