Purple Finch (male).

[Daniel Cadieux]

From this past spring, taken at a friend's backyard feeder setup in Lyndhurst, Ontario. I did bring the perch with me from Ottawa, but the subjects and backdrop (blooming crabapple tree) were provided by him :-) One of my last sessions before upgrading camera bodies. At this point my 40D had died and I was using my 30D backup...it felt odd processing an image from such a "small" resolution...the 7D has HUGE files compared to this!!

Canon 30D + 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/250s., f/5.6, ISO 800, handheld, natural light.

Removed green cast from the white belly (combination of dodge tool, sponge tool at desaturate, and selective color), bill clean-up (patch tool), enhanced the perch colour (sponge tool), and a stray feather eliminated (clone tool).

[PRABIR BHATTACHARYYA]

Wow, Daniel! Beautiful capture. And thanks for the details on the work flow.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

Neat perch, angle in frame, head turn, the little feather flipped up on the abdomen.

I think I would prefer the BG to be just a little less bright in relation to the bird. I find it mildly distracting.

Cheers

Randy

[Mike Landwehr]

Daniel, I really like all the color in this image. The finch may not stand out quite as much as it would against a background that was not so similar in color, but the colors are lovely, and the background color adds to the impact of the image for me. I like the slight diagonal provided by the bird's body, and the nice head angle. The perch is great, and everything looks sharp and clean. For me, the image would be a little stronger if the perch was positioned on a diagonal, rather than at a right angle with the bottom edge of the image.

[Ken Watkins]

Daniel,

BEAUTIFUL

[Sachin Saraf]

Beautiful!!! Wonderful to see how the BG compliments the colors of the Finch...TFS

[Dumay de Boulle]

Great colors and IQ, really enjoy the mottled BG. Nice pose from the Finch...I like Mike's suggestion re; angle of the perch....But its not a deal breaker...A lovely image overall

[Stu Bowie]

Tack sharp Dan, with good DOF throughout. I do like the colours of your finch, together with the angled pose. Clever choice of BG.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

I had a minute to work on a repost to show what I was thinking. I wanted to help the bird stand out a bit more and to downplay the brightness of the BG without altering the lovely colors and soft shapes. I also thought there was a subtle green color cast on the bird, esp. noticeable on the belly.

So, luminosity layer on BG only, bird masked off. Blend mode to multiply at 72%. Used the white neutralizer filter in Nik Color Efex to remove the light green cast on belly.

Just an option.

I like taking your own perches with you, neat idea.

Cheers

Randy

[Tom Rambaut]

Randy's repost is strong - the bird pops more. I love the colours here and pose. The perch is nice also. Fine image Daniel.

[Raul Padilla]

i like the purpule all, not common cobination of bird and bkg, the pose is very dinamic