Mike,
I like the capture because of the clean background; free of obstructions. We need to address a few issues...the capture angle is too steep, the head angle and eye contact are off, your focus point was not on the eye, but on the lower neck area; thats why the eye is always out of focus. The bird is also on the soft side. The sun angle is coming in from the bird's right hand side; thus giving your subject uneven lighting and this causes shadows. You also had too much negative space on the bottom and not enough space on top. I modified the base composition and corrected all of these to the best possible solution. I also boosted contrast and saturation just a tad and selective sharpened the area around the eye...:cool:
Mike did you do noise reduction on this? I'm asking because that is the blurry look I get when I do noise reduction and don't do it as a masked layer.
I also agree that the perch/bird should have been in the lower part of the image and not up so high. Your version leaves a lot of negative space down below and there's no reason to have that there if it doesn't add to the story of the bird. Always try to get a little extra in all directions and then you can recrop in post-processing to get the look you want.
Keep 'em coming! I know how frustrating these little birds can be but you do look as if you're making progress.
i had a big problem with this bird because the left hand side of the bird was obstucted by an out of focus piece of foliage. i cloned as much as i could to get the color right, but, i think i ruined any chance at a really sharp image. i know the bird was placed too high in the picture.
the fact that Gus came up with a much better image on this...well we know who the pro is.
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