Took this last year (obviously, since there's no green around here right now! :D). This female scarlet tanager was playing peek-a-boo with me in a small pine tree. Any C&C are welcome!
Olympus SP-550 UZ
f4.5 @ 1/400, ISO 100, -0.3 EV
Program mode, spot metering, auto WB
Processed in PS CS2; cropped, curves adjustment, saturation increase, noise reduction, and sharpening
Hi Chris - like the peek a boo pose - you have a good Head angle and eye contact. I might just try and lighten and sharpen the eye a tad - but other than that looks good to me.
Have to agree with Mr. Peters as well! Also, looks to me like all of the major lines in this are oriented vertically so I wonder if a vertical composition would be more effective.
Thanks everyone for commenting! I took your suggestions on sharpening and lightening the eye, hopefully this looks better.
Alfred, this was taken before I joined BPN and learned that spot metering is not the best metering mode to use. I used spot metering for birds because most of my bird pictures are not as close up as I would like, so I thought spot metering would help ensure that the camera exposed for the bird and not the surroundings. Generally I center the bird so that the camera will meter and focus on the bird, and then I crop in PP to move the bird out of the center.
Christopher, for my personal taste I like the last version best. My first impression when seeing your original post was that the right side was distracting. The crop makes it a stronger image IMO. Nicely done!
Peeking out of the Pine
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