Kinglet

[nickolas thurston]

A kinglet shot in Kern County California. Shot on a 7d 2 and a 500mm f4 lens. 1/640 f4 iso 1250. I used the de-haze slider in camera raw as the raw file was very hazy. I did some sharpening and denoising after re-sizing. Any advice on how to edit this would be appreciated it just looks slightly off to me. Thanks, Nickolas Thurston.

[John Mack]

Nice pose on the bird i like the background color.

[Isaac Grant]

OK so the background color is fantastic. What is the background? A house? The bird looks over sharpened to me. It has that crunchy/over processed look. Kinglets are tiny and incredibly soft little birds. I have held them many times. Their feathers are silky smooth. Shot looks a bit too dark to me. Also I am not crazy about the dark spot in the lighter area that is just to the right of the bird. Also not a fan of how those areas transition. I would try and blur where the differing orange tones meet so the transition is not so abrupt. Plenty of was to do that. You could try and put the background on a separate layer at a lower opacity and see if you can dodge a bit of the darker area to make it blend better. Could also do something like a guassian blur at a really low percentage (like maybe 2%) and only paint it onto the transition zone. I am not crazy about the fence either as a perch. I am not familiar with the de-haze filter so not sure how it affected the shot.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Great bird on a so-so perch. The first thing I noticed was the diagonal line going through the BG - if you were setup I would have moved a bit left or right to make sure that line was out of the frame. I agree there is a "crunchy" look to the sharpening as posted, especially on the shoulder and face areas. Great colours, and I like the view of the feet holding on to the perch.