Northern Cardinal

[Henry Domke]

One of my goals for 2014 is to get some decent Cardinal pictures. They are one of the most popular birds in North America and they are common here at the Prairie Garden Trust.

This picture was taken this morning. The white background is snow. I was so tight on the bird that I had to extend the canvas (using content-aware scale in Photoshop) on the right and top to improve the composition.

Any and all suggestions on how to improve are welcome!

Canon 5D3 600II + 12mm extension tube f/8 1/2,500sec ISO 1,600 Tripod used
Tent used as a blind and cracked corn was used as food
Processed with Lightrooom 5 and Photoshop CC

[Don Lacy]

Hi Henry, Nice eye contact with the viewer with plenty of detail around the head, the reds on the breast are a little hot when I pulled the image into PS they are reading 253 to 255 this could have been caused by the conversion to sRGB color space still something to look to when processing.

[Robert Kimbrell]

Very nice detail and light on the birds face. I like the head turn and the reds look good to me. I am ok with the tail being out of focus, But would prefer the feet to be more in focus.

[Holger Leyrer]

Nice Image. Great eye contact and details. But the feet are not sharp and the white BG works no good for me