Swamp Sparrow, Dallas Tx

[Amol Khedgikar]

Hi guys ,

This was taken in Dec 11, when Dallas was waiting for better weather to come. It never came.

I took this in early morning light. the bird allowed only 4-5 frames before it took off. A lot of dry twigs and leaves have been taken off. other than that almost nothing done to the bird itself.
7D+ 100-400 @ 400, 5.6, 1/800, AV mode, exp +0.3. I have a couple more that show the head in perfectly perpendicular to the sensor but I liked the head turn on this one. Cropped for comp. temped to have a landscape crop but decided against it.

C&C always welcome and appreciated.


http://gallery.photo.net/photo/15328493-lg.jpg

[Randy Stout]

Amol:

Nicely exposed, pleasant BG.

The area around the eye looks as if just a bit over processed/sharpened.

In a perfect world, would prefer the head just a bit more away so the bill didn't merge with the body quite so much.

Cheers

Randy

[Sachin Saraf]

Nice exposure, pose and BG.....Agree with Randy about area around eye...also looks like focus is on body and not on eye

[Amol Khedgikar]

Hi Randy,

I agree with the head being tilted a bit too much. But compared to others I liked the eye contact in this one better. I will post the other one later.

Sachin, I used a sharpening action provided on this forum. The sharpness around the eye looks OK on my monitor. If at all, I may have missed the exact eye and focussed on the immediate area around the eye.

THanks for your inputs guys.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Amol, I like the colours in both the sparrow and BG, and I would try a version with a horizontal comp. Maybe a bit tight behind the tail. With regards to the sharpening some plumage on certain birds tend to look over sharpened due to their thinner feather detail. I agree there are areas that look oversharpened. What I would do around the eye of the sparrow - use a small soft brush and use the blur tool with a low opacity and just dab away the crispy bits.

[Amol Khedgikar]

Thank you Stuart, I think this is one of those birds.

I will post a horizontal crop with the changes. I like the landscape version better for this but I posted vertical as the perch is vertical and yes the tail is crammed for space.

[Dave Leroy]

Good looking bird, nice colors and agree nice eye contact. I am not sure how you resize for web, but my file sizes vary a bit before I resize so I adjust sharpening a bit. Normally same formula works but not always.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Amol, what a shot...not easy to get these. loved the pose and the clean BG. A bit oversharpened for my tastes....but nice details overall.