Northern Cardinal In Spring Blooms

[Jack Dean III]

Canon T2i
EF 400mm f/5.6 lens
f/7.1
1/500 sec
ISO 200
The morning I shot this I found a tree that I liked at a local school set my gear up and waited for something to happen. I noticed a cardinal flying around but it didn't seem to want to land in the tree that I wanted him to. In order to get him into the tree I used an electronic call from my phone for about 15 minutes. In the original shot the bird was in the center of the frame. I would have loved for him to be facing the opposite direction or to the right side of the frame but it just didn't work out that way and the blooms just looked better cropped like this. If I had this to do over again I probably would have used f/8 and an ISO of about 600. This was processed in lightroom and I did tone down the reds a bit to show the detail in the bird better.
Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings with criticism I am here to get better. This was taken a couple of years ago so I have learned a bit since then.

[Diane Miller]

Nice! Cardinals are so pretty and this one is giving you a good look. It's always difficult composing in a setting like that, especially with a subject that won't listed to directions... But I think you did a good job here.

I'd crop a small amount from the right, or clone to remove the small piece of a blossom right at the edge.

You probably could have gone to a higher ISO, but I don't see the need for more depth of field here. If too many blossoms are in sharper focus they would distract from the bird. I think you have a very good compromise here.

The bird appears a bit soft, with focus on the blossoms in front of it. More depth of field isn't the answer for that, you need absolutely accurate focus, with one focus point active and right on the bird.

How did you tone down the reds? They can be too saturated with Canons using the default Adobe Standard profile. Go to the Camera Calibration panel and have a look at the other profiles. Some will be awful but a couple may subdue the reds a little and give you a shot at bringing them back up with more control in the HSL panel. Or in PS, use Selective Color and add a little magenta, cyan, black and yellow to red. But I'd do what I could in raw conversion first. Lightroom excels at tonal and color correction.

Hope to see more from you!

[Glennie Passier]

Hello Jack. Lovely image of the Cardinal. I've never actually seen one, so unable to comment on the colour. Good work in the trouble you went to to entice him into the tree. If I set my camera up near the local school I would probably be arrested!

Like Diane has mentioned, I would slice a bit off the RHS and maybe a bit off the top to give the bird the appearance of a little more room in front, to fly off into. The blossoms are beautiful. I can't help much with the PP but it looks good to me, as do the techs...even though this image was probably before BPN!

Looking forward to seeing more!

[Jack Dean III]

Thank you both. I have since went back and cropped the image a bit to get that partial bloom out of the pic. Thanks for pointing that out, things like that is what I need to be training my eye to notice. I also noticed that in my last edit I messed with the vibrance and saturation and that is something that I don't do too much now with animals. I have since returned them to where they should be and found that I didn't need to mess with red saturation in HSL.

[Glennie Passier]

Are you able to repost with the alterations?

[Jack Dean III]

There you go Glennie.

[Diane Miller]

YES! Gorgeous!!

[Glennie Passier]

Stunning. It looks like he's about to fly off the screen!