Gold Finch Winter Colors With "Tooth" Pick

[Ed Cordes]

From my back yard yesterday. Warm light was from the time of day - early AM. While the breeding colors of these guys are stricking I also like the muted colors of the winter phase. In this imae I liked the seed fiber in the beak giving the impression of a tooth pick.

7D with 500 f4. Evaluative metering at ISO 200 and f 4.5 with 1/1600 sec at EV zero. Image is about 60% of full frame. I used a quick mask to remove a branch on the left.

Thanks for looking. C&C most welcome.

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice **** Ed, perch and BG are nice and HA and eye contact are very good too. I wish the fiber was a bit larger.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the angle, eye contact, BG and the piece of grass adds to it. I'm surprised that there is some noise in the BG at this low ISO since I guess you only sharpened the bird.

[Ed Cordes]

Thanks for the comments. Yes, Axel I only did creative sharpening on the bird. However, after reducing for the web I applied Web Sharpen in PK Sharpener 600 pixels narrow edge. The Sharpen for Web also created the faint halo visible at the beak. However this doesn't show up in a print when I use the output sharpener for print. I made a print at 8 1/2 X 11 ant the BG has no noise and details are tack sharp.

[Raymond Barlow]

Very nice Ed, clean bg makes this bird really shine in the sweet light.

[Harshad Barve]

Lovely compo , nice BG and lighting here , toothpick adding much here
TFS

[Kiran Poonacha]

A classic compo, pose, BG and light here.. congrats..