Agree with Randy's comments, Stuart. Lovely pose and sharpness with DOF covering the bird well. Including ISO would help in assessing exposure. Not sure if this was overexposed at capture or brightened in post to extract shadow detail. Love the iridescence and eye.
this is completely over the top, but the fall colors inspired me to tweak your original. There are lots of ways to go with this one, but this version makes me think of "riotous fall foliage". I feel that the darker blues play off the iridescent colors in the bird, the oranges play with the eye and perch a bit.
I used a variety of techniques. Used a large soft brush and burned in some areas, selected the bird, did an inverse selection and used curves, pulled down the midtones of background a lot, did two or three rounds of blurring to the background, etc. etc.
As I mentioned, this is a pretty over the top redo, so Doug is right, could have desatted the BG for a smoother look. Just felt like making it a bit loud, since the bird was really strong, and squawking it up!
Grackle
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