California Quail

[Jay Ing]

Went to the Golden Gate Bridge this morning for a time-lapse sunrise and found this cutie just before heading home. These guys are forever distractible, yet skittish.

D850+Sigma 500/4, 1/3200, ISO 3200, 7.1, HH, EC -1.0, C1P RAW PP, PS CCC adjustment, pesky branch removal and Neat Image NR with final output SS.

[Glenn Pure]

Sweet shot against a perfect background. Beautiful tone and colour on the bird and lovely detail. The background looks a little speckled to me and might be worth a stronger dose of NR.

[Jay Ing]

Umm, yeah something went wrong there... didn't invert my layer mask... bird had lost detail with NR applied to it - not the BKG. This should be better. (mods - not sure how I got triple posts... should delete the middle one... thanks).

[Isaac Grant]

This is beautiful. Really nice image of a quail. I love the isolation of the perch against that clean background. Details on the bird look great and you have a perfect head angle for the body that is facing slightly away. I would still apply a little more NR to the background to finish this one off. Happy New Year.

[Daniel Cadieux]

It is a pretty bird, and sitting on a beautiful perch. Nicely separated from the BG. I do find it rather low in the frame, and the repost is indeed better. Happy New Year!

[Raybel Robles]

Great shot. The repost is indeed better. I like the over the shoulder look. I do agree with Daniel that I feel is just a bit too low in the frame.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Beautiful bird nicely framed I would take a little off the top.