Please improve

[PhilCook]

A stinking hot 42 deg yesterday, 44 deg today, so I ventured up to the old dam again in the morning for a couple of hours to see what was coming in for a drink. Pretty hard getting good light in many of the shots as the birds were hugging the shade both in trees/bushes as well as on the ground....it was too darn hot for anything to be out in the sunshine. Got lots of nice images of various birds, and I liked this one, but I think it could be edited better....it looked a lot nicer on the back of my camera LCD...so please have a go at improving

I actually took up a flower head from the home garden, a light blue Agapantha in hope to get a bird to land on it just for something different from the usual " bird on a stick " sho. One single Silvereye took up the challenge late in the morning, and this is one shot of 7 I took before he vamoosed.

Canon 7D + 500 f4 + 1.4 x TC.......700mm, f6.3, 1/125, ISO 400, tripod mounted from a hiding spot among the thorn bushes approx 20 feet/6 metres from the subject....sharpen, noise reduction, curves adjust and contrast tweak, a little canvas added to bottom

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Phil, is there any way of providing a link to the RAW to download?

[Marina Scarr]

Processing is not my forte, so I"ll leave that part up to Steve. I absolutely love the color of the birds with its environment. It matches so well, and it's so pretty. I am okay with the HA. The one thing that keeps taking my eye away is the green highlighted area top right which you may wish to consider darkening or smoothing out just a tad. You're on your way to a lovely capture.

[Dennis Bishop]

To me, the saturation of the flower distracts from the bird, but I do like the saturation of the rest of the background. I desaturated the image but masked off the bird with a hard brush and masked off the corners, bottom, and top with a soft brush. Then, I increased the saturation just a bit using an inverse of the other mask. I like the green bokeh spot that Marina mentioned, but I tweaked the mask a bit to make sure its saturation wasn't increased.

[Faraaz Abdool]

A beautiful image, good idea carrying a lovely flower for a perch. I agree with Dennis on the saturation of the flower detracting from the bird. It's just too rich! His desaturated version hits the spot.

[PhilCook]

Ah, OK....I do prefer the desat version, agree with suggestion. I was looking for more color POP, but thinking again it did detract from the bird, thanks very much.

Sorry, I dont know how to link the RAW file to here......I'm no computer genius sadly

[Bill Jobes]

You captured a real beauty here, Phil.

I agree that the intensity of the bird and the perch was in conflict. You indicated you wanted some 'pop'.

Here, I did selective Desat on the flower, but retained its beautiful color.

Then I did selective Vibrance adjustment on the bird in PS6, to let its colors own the image.

[PhilCook]

Thanks Bill, it does look more eye catching now, looking more like it should be. I just did a quick redo and selectively brightened the bird, inverted selection and darkened backdrop with levels adjust.

I quite like it now, but there is stil something amiss....perhaps there is only so much one can do with certain images, the photographic weather conditions may of played a big part.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Phil, this is a lovely capture - really beautiful colors, pose, and environment. I think the elusive "something" might just be the difficulty the eye has with separating the bird from the background. If you have the bird and bg on different layers, and it sounds like you do, you might want to try a curves adjustment on the bg to bring the level down even more. All told, a very nice image.

[Roger Clark]

Phil,

Your repost is better, but I agree with Kerry. The background needs to be darker, and perhaps blurred some, especially around the bird's head. I like the saturation in your repost.

Roger

[PhilCook]

Hi Phil, this is a lovely capture - really beautiful colors, pose, and environment. I think the elusive "something" might just be the difficulty the eye has with separating the bird from the background. If you have the bird and bg on different layers, and it sounds like you do, you might want to try a curves adjustment on the bg to bring the level down even more. All told, a very nice image.

I think your simple assessment is right Kerry, the backdrop needs more darkening....I think I just overlooked the obvious....will experiment some more, thankyou