Savannah Sparrow

[Daniel Grossi]

I would have been loads happier with this photo had that little branch not been there, but I'll take it.

D500
Nikkor 600mm f/4e FL
1/640
f/5
ISO-400
Matrix Metering

Cleveland, Ohio
May 2017
Partly cloudy and warm 4 hours after sunrise

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful little bird, nicely shown. Complimentary perch and background the show off the bird well. Nice color and detail on the bird. The little branch can be removed easily if you are of that mind.

I noticed you switched from Center Weighted Metering to Matrix Metering, just wondering what prompted you to make the change?

Thank you for sharing.

[Bill Dix]

Lovely pose, perch and background. Good detail as well. As Joe says, that little twig could easily be evicted, but that is presumably not your style.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Beautiful IQ, Daniel. Very nice light and fine detail on this beauty. Like the perch and the graduated BG.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

[Daniel Grossi]

Beautiful little bird, nicely shown. Complimentary perch and background the show off the bird well. Nice color and detail on the bird. The little branch can be removed easily if you are of that mind.

I noticed you switched from Center Weighted Metering to Matrix Metering, just wondering what prompted you to make the change?

Thank you for sharing.

Thanks Joseph! I usually put my camera in matrix when I have a darker or equal contrast background and cloudy conditions. I seem to get better results with matrix in scenarios like that. My PV button is always set to spot so I can quickly change that if I don't get a good result. Normally I leave my camera in center and I always have spot metering ready to go with the PV button.

[Daniel Grossi]

Lovely pose, perch and background. Good detail as well. As Joe says, that little twig could easily be evicted, but that is presumably not your style.

Thanks Bill! I made an attempt to remove it but didn't like the result. I have no issue with people altering their BG's like that, I just try to avoid it. More incentive to get a better shot I guess.

[Daniel Grossi]

Beautiful IQ, Daniel. Very nice light and fine detail on this beauty. Like the perch and the graduated BG.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

Thanks Geoffrey! I've been working hard on improving the backgrounds in my photos and it's really paying off lately.

[Isaac Grant]

I very much like the perch, pose and that perfect graduated background. The bird looks a little contrasty to me. I have seen tens of thousands of Savannah Sparrows so this is a bird that I am very familiar with. The whole picture is on the dark side to me. I did the following to this pic.

Cloned out the twig by using the clone tool in PS and grabbed from just below the stick. Made a small gap between the stick and the rest of the twig. Then used the lasso tool and outlined the twig. Hit control +f5 and did a content aware fill.
I burned only the twig to get rid of some of the highlights and then raised the brightness of the whole pic +20.
Then I dodged only the bird on a separate layer at 20% opacity and ran it over the bird 3 times.
Applied NR to background.

[John Mack]

Nice pose, nice perch, and a nice background.

[Daniel Grossi]

I very much like the perch, pose and that perfect graduated background. The bird looks a little contrasty to me. I have seen tens of thousands of Savannah Sparrows so this is a bird that I am very familiar with. The whole picture is on the dark side to me. I did the following to this pic.

Cloned out the twig by using the clone tool in PS and grabbed from just below the stick. Made a small gap between the stick and the rest of the twig. Then used the lasso tool and outlined the twig. Hit control +f5 and did a content aware fill.
I burned only the twig to get rid of some of the highlights and then raised the brightness of the whole pic +20.
Then I dodged only the bird on a separate layer at 20% opacity and ran it over the bird 3 times.
Applied NR to background.

You've seen tens of thousands of Savannah Sparrows!? I've seen 3 now ha ha ha. Thanks for taking the time with this image and showing me how I could have improved it Issac. Clearly I have a long way to go in PS/LR.

[Daniel Grossi]

Nice pose, nice perch, and a nice background.

Thanks John!

[Isaac Grant]

TO put things in perspective I have been birding since I was 4. Now I'm 44. My father was a birder so took me at an early age. They are abundant breeders in any grassy area in the city and during migration we get thousands of them along the barrier beaches during a season. There are days in mid October where you can easily see hundreds in every stop you make.

Often times edits are highly subjective. I may like it brighter or cropped or cloned and you don't. My goal is to always try and keep it as close as possible to the original scene. For reasons above my pay grade, often times what comes out of the camera is not what the eye saw and I just try and get it back to that.