Eager to Learn Spotlight Image Richard Stern for week ending Apr. 20th, 2012 - White-throated sparrow

[Daniel Cadieux]

Congratulations Richard!!!

I was thinking about posting this as part of the Sparrow theme in the Avian forum, but decided to post it here, as I have a specific question. I already tidied this up by cloning and quick-masking away a lot of extraneous twigs and branches, especially at top left, but how do I remove the extensive oof brownish area that's in front of the branch and around the bird? I already did some Gaussian blurring, but still can't achieve a good background or sharp branch.

D7000, 300 f/4 AF-S + 1.7TC. Hand-held at 1/1250, f/9.0. ISO1600.


Richard