This time of year I thonk the female Northern Cardinal is really an attractive bird and very available in this area of the country. I caught this one in my backyard on a very cloudy-unpleasent day. She made it a great deal nicer day. Your thoughts on exposure, crop and general quality would be appreciated. Thanks.
Mac
Nikon D300
2008:12:07 13:05:47
200-400mm @ 400mm
600mm (in 35mm film)
1/160 sec, f/4
Mode: Manual
Metering: Multi-segment
ISO: 800
White balance: Auto
Flash: On
File size: 29.5MB
Image size: 1497 x 2100
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Color profile: sRGB
I can see why you like these birds, Mac. I love the soft colours and they work well against the grey BG. I would crop frm the left to have the bird on the left of the image looking into space on the right. You were obviously battling for light - you did well to choose ISO 800 and use flash. The image looks a bit soft so another round of sharpening would be good but I would mask it from the folded flight feathers on the wing as these can easily look oversharpened
I like the overal balance of soft colors a lot. Tony made a very good advise about composition on this imaga and I agree with him. I also would clone out the spot light coming from the falsh in the eye. Great BG by the way.
Aside from the compositional suggestions above there are too many branches. The light and EXP and BKGR are spectacular. Are you working at a feeder?
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Female Northern Cardinal
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