Several families of House Sparrows in my garden have fledglings and are providing no end of entertainment. I was pleased with this image as the hen seemed so "non-challant" about the demanding chick.
Taken with 100-400 at 365mm had a 1.4 attached but didn't need it for this shot. 1/250th at f / 8.0 with ISO 400.
I imported the RAW with Lightroom, cropping to 10x8 format, and then took the image into PS where I isolated the birds and increased the saturation slightly as the colour was flat. Also took out a couple of hot spots in the background.
Background is darker and busier than usually seen here, but I would be interested to receive any comments and suggestions - like taking up golf!
HI Gerald !!! ...... taking up gold would be a bad move .... trust me !!!!! :)
Difficult getting these guys in the open and with a good perch. I like the interaction very much and got two good head angles. Processing wise its interesting the mention of increasing saturation since it looked flat. If it looks flat leave the saturation alone and increase the contrast. Several ways to do so most common being curves. Will download and work to see what I come up with. btw once you make certain changes is impossible to make good results working with the existing jpeg.
While composing in the viewfinder do take note of the bg Sometimes moving a step left of right can clear an objectionable are like th brighter spot behind the birds head !!!!
The other is cropping size. If you need to have a specific output then there is no choice but generally I would suggest cropping to "best size" with no ration in mind.
Very nice composition Gerald.
Mr. Al covered all of the point of perfection...:) no nits from me...I do want to mention that the first thing that caught my eye was the branch coming out fromthe intersection of yor left side of the frame. Mr. Al cropped just a tad to take it out of that quadrant...keep them coming, looking foward for the next one...congrats...:D
Many thanks for the comments and encouragement. I think you are right about golf - too much of early morning starts and carrying heavy, expensive equipment around the countyside - mmmm, sounds familiar.
Clearly, I need to get to terms with "curves", adjusting the contrast through that. I like the tighter crop; I had chosen 10 x 8 isnce I am in the habit of putting my favourite shots on my pc as a desktop, and that is a 10x8 format.
House Sparrows
