Golden-headed Cisticola

[Glenn Pure]

A reasonably common bird found near waterways. This is another shot from my recent trip to the Western Treatment Plant near Melbourne. I've cloned a twig from the bottom right and a blurred bit of vegetation along the upper left edge. I had thought about this as a high key but liked the background so have not brightened that. Note the aperture which was a bungle. I had been doing some other shots and forgot to open it up again before firing away. The original was underexposed but I think had come up OK with a bit of careful processing and NR. I do love Neat Image. The crop is a little under half of the frame area.

As always, thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/500 sec, f11, ISO 1600. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur) after final size reduction.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Glenn, you have managed a good angled pose, and I like how we can see the feet holding on tight to the perch. I do like the earthy colours on this fellow, and the colour of the BG is just fine. I dont mind the slightly OOF branch just to the left of the main perch, but would definitely remove the angled OOF perch on the far left.

[gail bisson]

Stu took the words right out of my mouth! Agree with cloning out that stem.
Bird looks good with nice IQ and pose,
Gail

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Glenn, beautiful bird, nicely shown. I do not think F/11 hurt you. If mine I would probably remove all of the out of focus branches but that is a personal choice. For a crop of 50% I think it looks great. As you mentioned that the birds here are unfamiliar to you, so are your birds to me. Thank you for sharing.

[John Rowell]

I like that the feet positioned so they are not blocked by the perch and placement in the frame is just fine. Also agree with cloning out the stem on the left.

[Bill Dix]

Lovely color palette, and alert pose. Nice job on the PP; IQ looks very good considering you underexposed it. Ditto the above re the oof stem.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Looks like a grumpy bird. I'm OK with the BG tone as is, glad you kept it as such. I agree about the oof stuff at left. Turned out OK despite the bungle you describe.

[Glenn Pure]

Many thanks for all your considered views. It's funny but I like the oof stuff on the left so apologies for not reposting with it gone - perhaps I should have left the one on the right to balance? You may have noticed there had been some light rain and a few droplets still on the bird, esp the tail. BTW the background is an oof pond and shot taken from a car window which seems to be a good technique for this species at this site.

[Mike Poole]

I too like the fall off with the OOF branches to the left Glenn. OK, they might not give the classic clean look, but they do add some natural interest on this occasion. I'd maybe just sharpen the area around the eye a little more, but otherwise, all good.

Mike

[David Salem]

I really like this one Glen and the bird is beautifully sharp and exposed perfectly. Yes to the comments above about removing some of the out of focus branches but otherwise a very solid frame. Well done

[William Dickson]

Looking good Glen. Love the colours throughout the image. I don't mind the OOF on this one. They give depth to the image which makes the bird feel closer to us. Nice details and a lovely pose.

Good work

Will