Male Black-headed Grosbeak

[Arsdel Fluesmeier]

40D, Canon 100-400@350mm, 1/500 f 7.1, ISO 500

[Richard Stern]

Hi,

A nice pose, head angle and background, but to me the bird, especially the head, looks a little "plasticky" as if it's a heavy crop, or has been overly noise reduced.

Richard

[Craig Brelsford]

Your grosbeak is beautiful, and I think you've got something to work with here. You may have cropped in too heavily, as Richard Stern has pointed out; also, you left obvious Photoshop tracks winding around the stick and the bird. The stick, by the way, looks as if it's been snipped in Photoshop, and not in real life. Indeed, the stick has the look of one of those pushed into the mud as a prop; I could be wrong, and even if I'm right it's not necessarily a bad thing to use props; but I'd like to be told. One bit of Photoshoppery that you seem to have left out is the quenching of those hot spots on the stick. Looks as if you had a simple, green BG, and therefore I'd say that the shot could be improved by cropping it a little more loosely.