Hi Jean, a delighful little "Butterbutt" you captured here. I normally prefer a better HA but I must admit that this one shows the typical personality of this particular family of birds. I see you wanted to include the complete perch at bottom but I would be tempted to crop down there anyhow to hide the not so ideal blunt ending to it. I also wish the horizontal branch above the head wasn't there, but man do these little birds like the tangles!! Good colours and exposure, excellent view of its name-sake.
As far as "real or altered" element of your post, I'm really searching hard to find any traces of PS work done...if it is indeed altered then you did a great job of whatever you did:).
Very nice photo.
Although ha is not perfect, I know from my trying it is always hard to get small bush birds in focus never mind a perfect pose so well done.
The bird has lots of detail and I wonder if you sharpened before or after down sizing.
My guess about significant changes, and it is a guess, is you may removed or cleaned up some bg material on right side.
Dave
If you did anything significant to the photo in PS, it's not apparent at first (or even third) glance, Jean. :) The head angle has been mentioned - yet the bird looks like it is actively searching for food among the sticks and branches of its environment and, as a biologist, I like that. You might try a little more sharpening on the head and I would suggest a crop off the right - at the risk of bringing the bird more into the center of the frame.
Well, here is the unretouched, unprocessed shot. Although I actually really liked the colorful leaves all around the bird, showing it in its natural setting, I really wanted a close-up.
Unfortunately, a branch went right across its face, ruining the shot. I took the branch off of the face and painted in an approximation of what should have been there, then toned down a patch of green right in front of the bird's breast. After noise removal, cropping and sharpening, I ended up with this. I'm not sure if it's cheating too much to make so many changes, but at least I did get a pseudo close-up of this little warbler after chasing it around for days.
It's not cheating if you tell us what you've done. :) I'm impressed with the way you were able to remove the branch and reconstruct the head without a trace - as well as the IQ you achieved from such a heavy crop.
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