Indigo Bunting

[Christopher Miller]

Found this male indigo bunting in our blackberry patch a couple days ago. I'm not sure if the OOF vegetation in front detracts from the shot or not. What's your opinion on it? Any C&C are welcome!

Olympus SP-550 UZ
f4.5 @ 1/160, ISO 100, -0.7 EV
Program mode, pattern metering, cloudy WB
Processed in PS CS2; cropped, curves adjustment, slight saturation boost, noise reduction and a little gaussian blur on the BG, and some selective sharpening on the bird head

[Cheryl Flory]

I like the sharpness in the bird's head, and details in the feathers, and the OOF bg. It's too bad you can't clearly see the feet. I might crop off a little bit from the bottom. nice sharp bunting.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Chris Wish the oof vegetation was less but you still came up with an excellent image !!

The main problem is competing with the bird and my eye keeps going back to that area !!! These little guys are frustrating !!!!

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Christopher,
I like the capture, you have sharp details with good color rendition, agree with Mr. Forns on the out of focus leaves in the foreground...my eye keeps drifting there too...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Christopher Miller]

Thanks for the comments! The problem with this was I was having to shoot over blackberry bushes. I did get some photos without any vegetation covering the bird's feet, but unfortunately they didn't end up real sharp, so this was the best shot I got.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Chris - good HA and eye contact - colours are good and it is plenty sharp.
Agree about the OOF foreground elements - IMHO for OOF foreground elements to work yiu really have to use them as a compositional tool - it can be hard but sometimes the results can be great... Check out my avatar for a idea of what I mean.
looking forward to seeing more.