Grasshopper Sparrow

[Wayne Wood]

I'm not sure I could have asked for more than what was presented to me for this image, a nice head turn in great light. I am however wondering if I may have left too much room above and also I tried to pay more attention to not over sharpening the image, This is from last Sunday morning as nothing that I got yesterday was as pretty as this. Canon 20D w/ 100-400, F/8.0 @ 1/640 sec, ISO 200, manual exposure. Audio used to bring bird in.

[Doug Brown]

Looks like you guys had great luck with this bird Wayne! You've mostly accomplished your goal about oversharpening with the exception of the head feathers IMO. I would like to see a little more detail in the perch too. Thanks for posting!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Nice light and details. Maybe some S/H on the perch to get more details. Keep them coming!

[Leroy Laverman]

I like the pose. The light seems a little too hard and gives too much contrast however. I tried reducing the contrast selectively on the bird and perch using an inverse S curve (I like the darker background so I masked it out). I had to increase the saturation some (also selectively on the bird and perch) to compensate. I think you were right about too much space on top so I took a little off the top as well. Hope you like this version.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Nice pose and composition I like the repost as it does show more detail in the perch. Thanks for sharing Wayne/

[Arthur Morris]

Looked overall too dark for my tastes. Let's play find the differences! I made three fairly major changes. Can you spot them?

Lastly, I do think that the face is over-sharpened...

Were you you guys using taped calls or were you just very lucky? (I have no problem at all with the judicious use of tapes.)

ps: Good job on the re-post by Leroy--we were thinking along the same lines... Thank you sir.

[Wayne Wood]

Thanks very much for the feedback, truly appreciated, I love the reposts and will have to learn a lot more about PP, Artie I see how you've lightened the image over all , The perch is much better , I tried something with it in s/h but ended up with a halo around the perch, I'm interested in the steps that were taken to help this image especially in regards to the perch. Oh and yes we are using recordings this bird is quite curious but very relaxed and not stressed at all during these sessions

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice one Wayne, it was pleasant to photograph this guy yesterday... and the sightings of the other sparrow species were cool too. Artie: some of the changes I can tell is that you cropped top and the bottom too, you've brightened the image and maybe tweaked the colors a bit? (seems less "brown" overall), and you've lightened the iris of the sparrow (unless that came out during the brightening part.)

[Arthur Morris]

YAW Wayne. I simply made a rather large SH/H adjustment on the entire image as the BKGR was too dark as well as the perch. (I made sure to increase the mid-tone contrast to 12.) After that, there were still some areas of the perch in deep shadow. I painted a QM of them and then used Curves on an adjustment layer (Control M) to lighten them. I made a QM of the iris and lightened it in the same manner, and then cropped from the top and the bottom a bit (the latter after QMing your name back in).

Please let folks know when you use tapes or when you are working at feeders or using bait or when you are using a decoy owl, otherwise folks get to thinking, "How lucky was this guy" rather than "That guys is pretty smart...) Thanks!

[Arthur Morris]

Nice one Wayne, it was pleasant to photograph this guy yesterday... and the sightings of the other sparrow species were cool too. Artie: some of the changes I can tell is that you cropped top and the bottom too, you've brightened the image and maybe tweaked the colors a bit? (seems less "brown" overall), and you've lightened the iris of the sparrow (unless that came out during the brightening part.)

Ah, I missed your post Daniel. You did, however, manage a perfect score. Way to go!