I am interested in views on whether the pic is ok as is, or whether the twig in the right bottom corner should be cropped or cloned out. Or in any other comments that could improve the pic.
50D
500 f4 + 1.4x
ISO 400
f5.6
1/1600
I think this would work well as a portrait, cropping some off of the sides. The tree bark seems a little hot, maybe toning it down wouldn't draw too much attention away from the bird, would also like to see a little more room under the tail. I like the look back head angle it has and bird looks sharp. not sure what to do about the twig in the BG
Thanks Dan, the birch was too hot. I tried to cool it down on this one and added a bit of tailroom. I also made a portrait and I think that is my favorite (had to clone out a bit of the intruding bark on the left). Next post. What do you think?
Dan made some good suggestions. As far as BG is concerned, since you could not do much while composing the image (I mean you may not have had a chance to step to the right) I would do some BG retouching with quick masks probably and some healing.
Hi, first off, I hope you don't mind me cropping your shot, it's a good shot, I like the eye contact and overall mood of the shot.
As a simple crop without adding canvas (more of which which would be preferable on the bottom) this works for me.
I like the vertical and feel that the stick across the beak could be cloned out. Sometimes I have good luck cloning sticks across a birds and sometimes the stick wins. And I do like the background color as a good fit for the bird
Scot, I agree that twig has to go. My cloning skills aren't that great it seems, current attempts to remove the twig result in a small but noticeable mess. I will try to improve on that.
Thanks for all the good advice given
Another option (and I would incline toward this) is to replace the background with a gradient. You've got clean edges around the bird and the tree, so the masking is easy. Also brightened the eye and sharpened. This is a nice image, worth a little time to get it just right.
Last edited by David Thomasson; 05-01-2009 at 11:15 AM.