Young Male RWBB

[Steve Canuel]

Liked the perch/perch angle and the BG color (reflected hill and bushes on water) of this image. I also liked the above the eye "winged" stripe. I found the sharp detail on the end of the perch a little distracting so I tried to blur it up a bit. Not sure if I achieved my intention. 20D, 500/4 + 1.4xTC, f6.3, 1/200s, ISO 400, tripod mount.
Steve

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Nice composition,bg and details,nice work Steve!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the perch despite its size, BG and composition. The bird looks a bit oversharpened.

[Grace Scalzo]

I too like the perch, but I'll go out on a limb (Sorry!) and say that I might like to see it not blurred. It looks odd to have it blurry and the end sharp. THe colors and detail on the bird are beautiful.

[Jonathan Michael Ashton]

I don't know if you have selectively sharpened the bird? Some looks a little too sharp. I would like to see the shot without the blurring of the perch, I don't really see the need to blurr erything other than the subject, was the perch really so distracting?
Jon

[Daniel Cadieux]

I too like the perch, but I'll go out on a limb (Sorry!) and say that I might like to see it not blurred. It looks odd to have it blurry and the end sharp. THe colors and detail on the bird are beautiful.

I would like to see the shot without the blurring of the perch, I don't really see the need to blurr erything other than the subject, was the perch really so distracting?

From what I've read in Steve's description is that he only blurred the tip of the perch, not the whole thing (which was likely already blurred from DOF - see tail). I like how the eye goes down from top of perch to tip and then up to the bird's eye and then out to where it is looking. A great visual loop was made here :-) I will have to agree about the bird seeming to sharp though.

[Steve Canuel]

Thanks for the comments and critiques. I was interested in seeing the opinions on the angle of the perch. As Daniel noted, the blurring is due to DOF. The perch is coming towards me and behind the exposed end is a 2-3 inch strait section that isn't visible at this angle. I did run a bit of NR on the whole image, blur the tip, and selectively sharpen the bird after a couple of basic sharpening passes on the whole image (I do this on every image). Here's the unprocessed image (except for crop and resized) for comparison.

[Bonnie Block]

Beautiful, and slightly unusual pose, Steve. I do agree that it is just a bit too sharp.

[Nikolay Staykov - shotlandetsa]

Wonderfull image and BG, just a bit oversharped. Congrats!

[Steve Canuel]

Bonnie, Nikolay,
Thanks for the comments.