An appealing image, sharp on the eye and face, interesting perch, good to have the object of the birds attention included. I like the little patches of color elsewhere in the BG.
In a perfect world, a bit more DOF would help. You could probably have pushed the ISO a bit to give you some more aperture flexibility. There is a small amount of noise showing up in the BG, but I still think you could have dealt with that in post, inorder to get the greater DOF.
To my eye the image temp. is slightly warm, pleasant, but a bit warm. What time of day was this taken?
Thanks so much for the detailed and very helpful feedback. Much appreciated.
You're of course right in that more DOF would have been preferable. But ISO 800 is really ugly on my 40D and I often don't have the time to do much post processing such as noise removal. Hence, I tend to stick to ISO 400 and trade off DOF if necessary.
The image was taken about 20 mins. before sunset. But I did add one step of saturation in the DPP raw tab. Maybe it's too much.
I tried about -8 on the ACR temp. slider, which I thought looked a bit more accurate re: colors, but within reason, it all comes down to the story you are trying to tell with your image, what feeling you want to impart, so go with what looks best to you.
I like the image. The flapping wings of the fledgling and the warm light add to the image.
Regarding NR, I use the Noiseware plugin in PS3 and I find it really easy to remove the noise on
my images.
A friend of mine told me about the hummer nest in Alviso but I didn't get the chance to check it out.
Maybe next year... :)