Pine Siskin

[Wayne Wood]

I created this image yesterday morning at a feeder set up. It was quite cold and damp and these Siskins were feeding heavily on Niger seed. A tiny bit off the top and bottom. Self critique, I loved the pose and the separation from the bg, I do wonder about the bright patch around the perch. How distracting is it and should I have cloned the few snowflakes that are in the image? In advance thank you for your feedback.




Canon 20D w/ 200 F/2.8L, F/5.6 @ 1/400sec, ISO 800, Manual exposure @ +2/3

[Maxis Gamez]

Hi Wayne,

Great details and eye contact. Have you tried these guys with a little of fill flash to pop the colors a little? The snow flakes don't add much to the image as they are very few. I would clone them out. IMO.

Keep them coming!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the soft light, perch and eye contact and might sharpen a bit less. I would clone out the two snow flakes.

[joel quenneville]

Another vote for removing the snow flakes. I love your perch with the lichen. I would have wished for a little more DOF but you didn't have enough light. You might try brightening the head some in PS.

[Mike Milicia]

Nice bird and sharp detail, although I agree it may be a tad oversharpened for my taste.
Image seems a bit dull and flat. Agree that a touch of fill flash would have helped here
but I think it can also be improved with some additional postprocessing.
Seems like you have a great deal of headroom with respect to the white point.
Here's a quick repost to see what you think.

This is what I did :
1 - Created a mask to enable adjustment of the bg separately from the bird and perch.
2 - Using the masks and levels adjustments, brought the white point in quite a bit for the bird and less for the bg.
3 - Used curve adjustments to bump up the contrast on the bird and perch quite a bit and again less on the bg.
4 - Also masked out the eye on the above adjustments and then used another levels adjustment on the eye only to lighten it up.
5 - Used a curves adjustment on the bg to selectively tone down the bright areas a bit.

If you used RAW capture, you may also try increasing the exposure a bit during RAW conversion while using the Recovery slider to tone down the highlights if needed.

[David Thomasson]

I do wonder about the bright patch around the perch. How distracting is it and should I have cloned the few snowflakes that are in the image? In advance thank you for your feedback.

Very nice shot. Once you get the bird and perch masked out, it's easy to clone out the bright patch behind the perch. Invert the same mask and you can makes a levels adjustment to bring out the bird's natural colors.