New Holland Honeyeater from home

[PhilCook]

I have a couple of these birds visit my garden each day, and I wouldn't normally bother photographing them as they are quite common here. I've been unable to get out and about much lately so I placed a few various types of perches around the veggie garden, things like flower heads, sticks, or as in this case an old Eucalyptus seed pod. Usually the little birds perch atop my tomato stakes, sprinkler heads, fence or the like, so inevitably they would alight upon my staged perches in time rather than man made perches. This perch set up at eye level directly in front of a slender ornamental Pine tree as a backdrop, pretty hard to manouvre my camera in my smallish courtyard style back garden without getting fences etc in the shot.

Canon 7D + 500 f4......f5, 1/320, ISO 400, no flash, tripod mounted......cropped to vertical, selective sharpen, slight shadow enhancement and something I have never done before I applied some Gaussian blur to the backdrop as opposed to the usual noise reduction process = maybe a bit over done now ?

[Diane Miller]

Beautiful and sharp bird! The BG is perfect, to me. But I find the large and slightly OOF seed pods a little distracting.

If it's not against your principles, it would be easy to shoot a second shot at the same framing with the front pod in focus and combine them. I don't think it would look too artificial.

[prasanna av]

Lovely bird and details. TFS.

[PhilCook]

Beautiful and sharp bird! The BG is perfect, to me. But I find the large and slightly OOF seed pods a little distracting.

If it's not against your principles, it would be easy to shoot a second shot at the same framing with the front pod in focus and combine them. I don't think it would look too artificial.

Yes I think you may be right, and i have a few others with simpler compositions as well this one

[Robert Holguin]

Very nice shot.
Love the background, great pose, excellent details, and great perch.
Great input by Diane.
Well done.

[vishaljadhav]

Lovely image , the bird looks nice and very nicely exposed.
The perch is surely interesting , Diane's suggestion may take it over the top.
About the bg i am not sure, as i don't know how the only NR version would have looked.
Lovely image over all

[Jonathan Ashton]

It works for me Phil, the thing is you know you blurred the background, it probably would not have occurred to us especially if you were at a wide aperture. The bird is well focused I am sensing some focus fall off toward the bill tip and inevitably toward the tail (which does not trouble me).
I was fascinated by the seed pod and I was about to suggest if possible a repeat shot with a smaller aperture but I think Diane made a good suggestion.

[Jeannean Ryman]

Lovely shot of a very uncommon bird to me. (never have seen one in person) Good suggestion about the pod. The background works for me.

[Karl Egressy]

Great looking bird, nice pose and background, Phil.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I love the choice of perch and bg setting. This image would have and even greater impact if you had had more dof on the perch IMO. Nice pose as well

[Don Nelson]

Excellent pose and great BG. Agree with Cherly on more DOF. You may have to focus stack to get it...maybe not... But focus stacking would give you both tail and perch DOF (only if the bird stayed still for a couple of quick refocusings).

[gail bisson]

I think this is lovely.
Good comp, and IQ. Perfect HA and body language.
Wish for more DOF to capture the OOF seed pod.
Gail

[Daniel Cadieux]

Everything looks good here, except for the dof issue on the perch that has been mentioned already. Great bird, colours, and the gaussian blur that you used has given you a very effective result!

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Thats a great bird to find in the backyard. Loved the details, BG, comp. Good suggestions above. composite will work well as suggested by Diane.

[Frank Schauf]

Excellent details, love the perch, great pose, very nice background, and nice light.

[mohammad reza shahab]

Beautiful perch, great pose,Excellent background and light.