I haven't been able to get out much over the past couple of months but I did manage to create a few images in our back yard over the holidays. We keep several feeders going all winter so I set up my pop-up blind near the house and settle in to await the regulars.
We have several pairs of cardinals that visit 3-4 times a day and I'm always looking for a better image of these lovely birds. All the birds perch in a large spruce tree before approaching the feeders so getting an unobstructed BG is difficult.
Canon 40D, Sigma 50-500mm on Induro tripod.
1/160 seconds, F 6.3, ISO 640, Flash - Flash not fired
I cloned out an OOF branch behind the bird. Cropped to about 65% of full frame.
Hi Stephen, I like the setting. The evergreen and the snow work well together. The pose is nice as it yields good eye contact. The red a clipped a little as indicated by the red histogram in Photoshop. Desaturating a little will bring out more detail. Thanks for sharing.
This is a beautiful scene stephen!
The red bird looks great against the dark BG, and the snowy spruce is very pleasing. As mentioned, some additional NR on the BG would help. Would also prefer if less of the bird was obstructed by the branches, but as mentioned this may be difficult.
Thank you Tony, Phil and Graham for taking the time to comment. I'll try and do a re-work to incoroprate your suggestions.
Phil I didn't realise that I had lost details in the reds. I hadn't increasd the saturation so I think that the problem was that I boosted the blacks a bit ion the image. When I back them off in the original more details appear. I've still got a lot to learn.
Male Northern Cardinal
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