Northern Cardinal

[Peter Farrell]

Taken yesterday afternoon, Sony A230, Sony 70-400G @400mm, F8, 1/320, ISO400 EC +0.7 HH.
Cropped to portrait, 40% of FF. My first PP in PS Elements 8. A lot of twigs cloned out below the perch. Also twigs going through the bird, across the lower portion of the tail and across the left talons. BG is the color it was, after cloning I cleaned BG up with healing brush tool. For the Bird I adjusted shadows/highlights, toned down the red channel and sharpened. For the perch I increased shadows and sharpened.

[Mark Young]

G'day Peter, I reckon this bird runs a close second behind the Bald Eagle as the US's best looking bird. :) And as you've shown, it makes for a great subject.
Half of the bird looks noisy, and the other half looks overexposed. I'm not sure how you would fix that in PP so I hope someone else can post some helpful tips for you. (cause I wouldn't mind knowing as well).

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Peter I think this is very nice. I might just crop a bit from the bottom and sharpen the bird especialyy eye area a bit. Head turn would have been ideal, but I think it is pretty good. Good PP skills.

[Bob Decker]

In my limited experience these are tough birds to shoot. They tend to come out much to red. You did a pretty nice job with it in my book, especially considering the side lighting.

[Lance Peters]

Lit from the side is always going to be tough - half the subject in shadow half in light.
HAP might want to talk to you on this one :) A head turn towards you would have provided more direct eye contact and the viewer more connection with the subject.
All digital cameras have a tendency to over saturate the reds.
Id be tempted to crop some from the bottom.
Looking forward to seeing more :)

[Julie Brown]

Good job on the cloning, Peter! I have a particular fondness for the Cardinal (state bird of Indiana). The BG looks good. Agree with all the techs cited above by those with more experience than I. :)

[Bob Decker]

Cardinal (state bird of Indiana). :)

Sorry Julie, couldn't let this pass. The Cardinal is the state bird of both states I've called home... North Carolina (since 1997) annnnd... wait for it... wait for it... INDIANA! Step-son lives in Indy. Both daughters + step-daughter in/near Muncie. Small world. ;)

[Bill Dix]

Bob - Nice looking bird. Cloning work looks good, but for some reason the areas below the branch - bg and tail both - look different from the areas above, not sure why. Good points made above, including Jackie's comments about HA and cropping.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Bob:What killed you on this one was the mixed lighting, the light direction, and its high contrast nature. The male cardinal is very tricky, and soft low contrast light I would consider a prerequisite. This could be on a cloudy or overcast day, or the bird completely in shadow.
Under bright sunshine the reds are almost certainly to be blown, the shadowed part a noisey dull brown. Nonetheless, under those conditions, which I wouldn't recommend, you can take a good image, but you will need to position yourself to minimize shadows, basically the sun more or less behind you, and be very careful to watch for branch shadows falling on the bird. This are particularly damaging to any avian image.
For some reason blown reds are especially hard to recover, probably due to camera sensors having great difficulty with that particular color.
Bottom line: be very careful that your subject in evenly illuminated, and avoid shadows. regards~Bill