Village Weaver on Aloe flower (South Africa)

[Dorian Anderson]

These are standard issue in Kruger's rest camps. While they're a bold black-and-yellow in breeding plumage, this winter garb is comparatively muted.

Tried to clone the OOF flower at lower right, but I had difficulty making it seamless so I decided to leave it (albeit with luminosity reduced to reduce its general presence).

Canon 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4x III on EOS R5
1/4000 at f/5.6, ISO 800
Processed in LR CC and Topaz

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Dorian, neat bird, I like the colors it must be gorgeous in the winter plumage. Sharp, nice background, interesting perch. I had a go at removing the out of focus flower. I think the Patch Tool in Photoshop worked pretty good. If you want to know what I did, let me know. Thank you for sharing.

[Kurt Bowman]

Nice light and detail on this species Dorian! My only it was the OOF flower on the bottom right, and see the repost from Joe. Nice work!

[Brian Sump]

Dorian, great to see fresh and new species like this. What family is this in - sparrow or Bunting or similar?

The yellow is nice on an otherwise fairly plain plumage. All in the plane too, sweet.

That flower is killer; too bad it wasn't a touch more vertical. Great job with the bkg and overall a solid frame!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Dorian ... the OOF bloom does not bother me that much , but easily removed with content aware fill .

Image looks nice overall with lovely contrasting colors , making the subject stand out nicely .

Love the IQ

TFS Andreas

[Arthur Morris]

Perfect always works for me. When using Content-Aware Fill, it is almost always best to smooth things out with a 65-pixel Gaussian Blur painted in in 33% increments.

with love, artie

[Daniel Cadieux]

I actually like the flower being angled that way, with an "X" created with the bird angled the other way. A bit bright on parts the subject IMO, but a highly appealing image. I'm kinda liking the other flower left in.