Sparrow 1

[Randall Farhy]

Another in my recent backyard series of natural environment portraits.

Conditions: Variable sun/clouds, sun poking through on this one with A bit of a breeze kicking up. Subject distance ~14'. Seeds dropped on ground to attract various birds.

Canon 7D, manual mode. Back button spot focus.
400mm F5.6l
600 EX RT hotshoe mounted, HSS manual mode.
Monopod

ISO 800 1/1000 F5.6 Flash setting between1/8 and 1/4 power, bare.

Processing: Minimal. Lightroom RAW conversion>Topaz Denoise5>LR4. Detail sharpened Bird/branch, brushed in extra noise reduction on bg. Removed 2nd catch light. Output sharpened 55% @ .3 pix.
Crop: 5x7 A/R, 73% original intact.

C&C suggestions always appreciated.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Randall,
Exposure looks good nice use of flash with overcast conditions. Good to see someone use distance as an option to ETTL - very precise and driven by knowing the subject's distance to the lens - well done. The opportunity here is composition, I am sure you have heard me talk about the paper drill. Placing a piece of notebook paper on the screen and finding the optimal look - harmon in the frame - balance in the image. In this case, I might take some off the bottom too much negative space here - give it a try and repost. Very clean eye and the color looks good thanks for resisting the urge to over saturate the browns. On balance, nice photograph clean exposure, nice job controlling the light and the subject has an interesting pose (fluffed-up) - please keep em coming.

Did I mention the clean and muted background - it adds so much to the image by not distracting the eye. Essentially, photos like this with planning and effective field techniques are often stronger that random pictures as a genera rule. Lets see more from the backyard and using bird seed to attract subjects is common practice and used my many many pros.

[Bob Miller]

Very nice shot with good bg and wonderful fluffed up pose. You might consider sharpening the feet a bit more

[Randall Farhy]

Thanks Jeff and Bob- Here's a tighter crop to minimize negative space, with additional sharpening on the feet. (crop is now 70% of the original)

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Better, you are on the right track less negative space and distracting elements to draw the eye.