Savannah Sparrow on Atlantic Aster

[gail bisson]

Canon 1DX
F 600mm II and 1.4x
ISO 1600
F 5.6@1/1000
Took this at out local beach area last week. Loved the fact that this gal landed in the flowers.
PP; Crop, NR on BG, levels, boosted the sat in the purple by +15, DE at 3% to bird and perch and USM to Jpeg.
Comments and critiques always appreciated and learned from with thanks,
Gail

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Gail, Very cool that you got him to land on the flowers. I think the green and purples add a lot to the yellows and browns of the bird.

Have you taken a look at vertical crop? I'm not sure the bush on the bottom left is adding much.

Miguel

[Richard Flack]

Beautiful shot Gail. Really like the perch. It adds great colour to the photograph. I think that Miguel's point about a vertical crop is a good one. Would be interested to see what that would look like.

[hennieloots]

Hi Gail - I love the perch and the nice colors it brings. The sparrow is nicely positioned in the green background. I would also like to see the vertical crop, although you might lose some green bg on the LHS. Nice IQ and HA.
Regards
Hennie

[Randy Stout]

Gail:

Nice shooting angle, colors, catchlight.

I had the same thought about cropping from the left, before reading others posts, so might be worth a try. If the bird was further to the right on the clump of flowers, it would be a no brainer, but a vertical crop might make handling the clump of flowers a challenge, and I wouldn't want to crop the bunch she is on.

I am still seeing some subtle noise in the darker areas of the bg. Having grown up with pushed Tri-X, doesn't really bother me, but would be an easy fix.

[gail bisson]

Thanks all for your comments. I did try a vertical but Randy has nailed the problem on the head. I have posted a vertical of an image with bird on left of clump looking right which makes for a better vertical.You can't see as much of the bird though
WDYT?

[gail bisson]

And here is the original cropped as a vertical , which I don't really like. WDYT?

[Randy Stout]

Gail:

Pane #6 doesn't work for me, bird too obscured. #7 has too much foreground, and without it, pretty square crop. So #1 it is for me.

Cheers

Randy

[Daniel Cadieux]

I'll be the odd one out (so far) and say that I like the OP's composition as-is from the get-go. Beautiful bouquets to go with e sparrow, and a mighty nice BG.

[Joe Senzatimore]

I liked it as original Gail. Great color and comp. make it work for me.

[Bill Dix]

Lovely sparrow and flowers; good techs. It's the OP for me, although I might crop up a little from the bottom, to just below the lowest in-focus flower.

[Greg Oakley]

Another vote for the original Gail - great pose and verrrrry sweet setting!

[mohammad reza shahab]

Beautiful shot Gail.
great color & perch .

[Shawn Zierman]

First, the pairing of the sparrow species with the asters is fantastic! Light quality is nice, and soft enough that the side lighting works well. I enjoy the original composition the best, but don't care for the present size of the bright oof bg area on the right hand side....feels just a bit unbalanced to me. What do you think of this crop? IQ loss I know, but just in terms of balancing the background elements and negative space....?

[Frank Schauf]

Nice in habitat shot.

[David Salem]

Nice looking shot Gail. I like the colors and detail in the bird. The flowers are a great setting for this bird and I actually like Shawns comp the best. Well done.