From earlier this winter. This Northern Cardinal is about 1 foot off the ground where seeds were available for it (also close to a public bird feeder). Always fun to place seeds underneath perches for birds that like to forage on the ground! I thought the three parallel sticks offered an interesting compositional balance. I tried a version without the OOF dark stuff above but thought it looked pretty bland that way...I'm also contmplating adding a tiny bit of vignetting in the same colours in LLC to counter-balance those dark spots.
The pose and eye contact couldn't be better. I love the three parallel sticks. IMO the brightest parts of the reds could be toned down a tad. I also might run NR on the BG. The noise of the prosumer bodies really make me wish for a 1d4!!
Effective composition, the vertical lines of the perch crossed by the horizontal line of the subject. I would be tempted to leave the darker areas above, with the exception that I might lighten the one over his neck to look more like the right side one.
I do agree with Aidan, that the reds look a bit neon on my monitor, and I am seeing some loss of detail in those same areas of max. red saturation.
Usually, I like the entire subject when it's sort of parallel to be in focus but in this example, the OOF progression of stalks ifs followed perfectly by the DOF trailing of on the bird and I think it works perfectly.
The brown stuff at the top is somewhat distracting and if it were me, I might have tried to clone it out?
Also..I went in to selective color and added Cyan to the reds and it made a big difference...but I deleted it by mistake or I would have posted it as a re-work for ya :)
At least you found a bird around here, seems all I get are chickadees at that feeder...nice one Dan, I'm on my laptop so I can't comment on the reds, still its a Cardinal photo I'd like to have..Hopefully there will be some action soon.
Hi Daniel. I like the pose, exposure, and front-of-bird sharpness here. The three sticks comp is not working that well for me, but that seems to be a minority opinion. :)
Daniel, what I liked most about it is the pose and the DOF. The parallel sticks are working better than having them not parallel. But without them it will be better IMO. I am not into suggesting cloning....so I'd leave them as-is. I am sure you will nail one in similar pose on plain snow BG....if you already haven't :-) What you do with 400mm f-length......I find quite impressive.
Cardinal coming in for food.
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