Green Finch

Thought I would take the plunge and post an image

This was taken today in my garden

All day it has been dull and damp

Image taken with a Canon 1DmkIII
300f4 + 1.4 Ext
f5.6
ISO 640
1/250
+1:3

Jacqui

Hi Jacqui!

Well, glad you took the plunge! This looks real good Jacqui. The background is nice and even and blurred well, the composition is very good. I might be temped to try one or 2 things. Try a crop a little off the left up to the beginning of the dark (shadowed) bark on the bottom left, for some reason my eye goes to that dark spot. Maybe also a touch of unsharp mask but you would have to see if that does anything for you. You have a little room at the top to play also if you want a little more bird in the frame.

Looks like you did real well Jacqui, hope to see many more from you and your garden!

Welcome Jacqui! It looks like you have a great garden to use for bird photography and your lens combination is one that has been a favorite of mine for quite a while. The Green Finch is a new bird for me...love the dusting of yellows across the bird. :) You certainly posted a fine image to start with and I hope to see more of your work!

Hi Jacqui and welcome. How's the water? I like this one a lot. It is way sharp and nicely composed. Unless the image I am seeing is a re-post, I disagree with George; I would not crop anything off the left side as the bird needs that room. I would take some off the top. If it fits with your personal ethics, you might consider re-working the light area in the upper right corner with either a Quick Mask or the Clone Stamp at about 80% opacity. Same goes for the seed husks. If you work large, they would be easy to eliminate.

Keep up the good work. And later and love, artie

ps: Sort of like this:

Jacqui,
I'm sorry about the whole "France" thing, but it looks like you are making the best of it.
As mentioned great background, looks sharp to me and is well exposed.

This is not a nit, but a suggestion.

The background looks relatively bright. If you have a good distance between your subject and the background, fill flash will allow you to stop down the aperture so the foreground area of the perch would be in focus.
I like the foreground elements to be in focus, however not everyone will agree on that point.

You can stop down the aperture and leave the shutter speed as it is. This will allow the background to be rendered darker (the ambient light has been reduced to the point of under-exposure). Use the flash to properly expose the subject and give it a little pop.

No real rules. We use digital cameras. Experiment.

Try different Fstops to see how it affects the fore and backgrounds. Try keeping the same shutter speed and changing the aperture and see how bright or dark the background looks. And last but not least try different flash level settings.

It is like spaghetti sauce, flavor to taste.

Thank you everyone for you friendly welcome and advice :-)

I will try to remove the husks as Arthur suggests (the image is not a repost) and even the light area in the corner too

As for fill flash

I do have a flash but I have hardly used it as I am not confident with it but I will give it a try,

I promise :-)

All the best

Jacqui

Here is a repost after atempting to clone the husks and the light area

Does it look OK?

Thank you in advance

Jacqui

Sweet!! You did a terrific job with this. The BG is even smoother, husks are gone, tiny bit off the side and top....well done!! :D

Looks wonderful. Much easier to make it look good when working with lots of pixels. Now, before you make a display print, you can use the Patch Tool to get rid of the husk (?) just below the eye. Then you might make a Quick Mask of the o-o-f and slightly hot area of the perch in the foreground, multipy it, and perhaps use a contrast mask on the layer: Unsharp Mask: 15/65/0 or thereabouts. Lastly, I would get rid of the little brown thing in the cavity--it looks like a seed...

As for the flash, I do not think that it would have helped this image at all. Flash ruins many more digital images than it helps, but like the bad little boy, when it is good it can be really, really good...

later and love, artie

Thank you to both George and Arthur :-)

I have taken on board the comments on the other adjustments that I can make, I will have to practice this evening as it sounds rather technical

But I will try :-)

Jacqui