white-throated sparrow

[Joel Arrington]

Canon EOS 40D, manual, 1/125 @ f/7.1, ISO 200, 70-200 mm + 2x ext. , flash fill

[Jim Poor]

Hi Joel,

Very nice color here for sure. The bird is facing away, which you can't do much about now, but there are a few things I would still change.

I'd get rid of the "pole" coming out of the birds back. Looks like he should be on a merry-go-round ;)

I'd also nip the twig that intersects the tail like below, get rid of the stick in the LLC. and stop the one from exiting the frame on the right.

[Joel Arrington]

Yes. Looks better, cleaner. I thought it looked clean to begin with, but that's better. Thanks. Just captured it this morning about daybreak.

-j

[Fabs Forns]

Hi Joel,

If it's OK with your ethics, Jim's repost looks very nice. Lovely colors and background. Wish you had a more pronounced head turn.

[Robert Amoruso]

Jim's touch up enhanced the image and he mentioned the head-turn thing.

I like the BG and how it compliments the bird's colors. The head/eye looks a bit unsharp but a twig in front of the image appears to have caused the camera to grab that as the focus point. If you are using all the camera's AF points, try selecting one near the eye and focusing with that one or use the central sensor, focus, focus lock and recompose the image. That will get you critical focus.

[Stephen Stephen]

Joel overall a nice image and Jim's PP work has cleaned it up a bit. I like the BG but it also looks as if it could do with some noise reduction (at least on my monitor).