CM...you have a nice pose and head angle of the bird. That's also a pretty interesting
perch, I like the lines.
My two issues is the softness and how dark the image is.
You might be able to brighten it up a bit with another round of post processing.
Do you have a flash? If so, this probably would've been the time to use it in the field.
The softness fix of course is a faster shutter speed. Increasing the iso would've
helped, but I'm not sure how the D90 handles noise at those higher settings.
Hey CM, we're neighbors! (I'm next door in McAllen :). I like the wren a lot. Good pose and neat perch. As Doug said, it's a bit dark, and I know with the D90, ISO is about as high as you'd want to go (used to have one and I'm assuming the 70-500 is actually the 70-300mm, since Nikon doesn't have a 70-500mm). Fill flash would have helped, but you can do some more to lift those shadows and sharpen it up a bit in post. Still not ideal, but it does help. I did a quick edit with a bit of crop off the right side just to give you and idea. I selected just the eye and did a curves adjustment, then a bit of noise reduction on the background only, then a bit of sharpening on just the bird/perch. Like I said, just a quick edit, so if more time were taken, you could do better.
Jeannean
Thanks for taking time to look and change my Wren. Yes we are close I live two miles from Bentsen Palm Birding Center.
Your picture of the wren does look better. The lens I used on this picture was a Sigma 50-500mm not a 70-500.
It must be my eyes or monitor as I think my pictures look fine, till someone changes them.
Then there is no question that there is an improvement.
I have Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS5, maybe I need to use them more on the pictures.
Composition - Nice picture and great comments above, I like the repost, it leverages the rule of thirds (composition technique) and gets the subject out of the middle of the frame. I might remove more perch from the bottom, too distracting.
Exposure - the shutter speed is too slow this can be seen in the soft image even with a tripod and some of the whites are hot. Check the histogram for clipping on the right side.
Form - the image has a good feel and I love the "looking back" pose staring into the upper part of the frame.
This image has plenty of good qualities just work on exposure, capturing detailed, crisp images,..this usually comes with managing light and exposure settings - keep em coming!!
Speaking of exposure - what is your exposure (M, AV, TV) and metering mode (spot, matrix etc.)
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 03-01-2013 at 06:15 PM.
Bewick'S Wren
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