Northern Cardinal Female

[Bill Jobes]

Nikon D300
Nikon VR 200-400 @ 400mm
1/320
F/6.3
ISO 800

A few distracting branches at upper left cloned out.

Comments and critiques, as always, welcomed and appreciated !

[Steve Canuel]

Nice, fiery color on this one Bill. Detail on the bird looks good. Also like the parallel lines of the branches and the bird.

[Dan Walker]

Great BG and detail. Seems a little tight around the head and tail, I would add some room if you have any to spare. This could work well as a verticle.

[arash_hazeghi]

love the details, BG, and colors here, sharpness is excellent too. I am not sure about the 2nd branch, I can see it balances the composition a bit but at the same time can do without, let see what others say.

Well done

[Jory Griesman]

Tack sharp, with great feather detail and exposure. Agree with Arash - my first thought was to clone out the bottom/right branch. I would also add a bit of canvas (or less crop) bottom and top, but I suspect the bottom was too busy in the original (more branches, etc.). Also like the complementary background.

[David Thomasson]

Nice shot on multiple counts ... head turn, eye contact, pose, perch, colors, and sharp details.

Thoughts about color: If I were going to print this as a brightener for a room dominated by cool hues -- blues, greens, grays -- I would keep all the fiery colors of your original.

On the other hand, if this were all about the bird (and not about surroundings), I would tone down the background considerably to eliminate the color-competition
between subject and background ... something like this:

[Bill Jobes]

Thanks for the fantastic critiques, and suggestions !

Dan, I thought a lot about loosening up a bit on the head and tail crops. I did have some room to do that.

Good point on the second branch in the foreground, Arash. I kept it as liked the three elements leaning in about the same direction, so decided to keep it.
But as we see in David's outstanding repost, it also works well without it.

I like very much your BG color revision David !

Blending all comments thus far, I can easily visualize the image as a vertical, with more room top and bottom, and David's single-branch and color revisions.

[Paul Lagasi]

Nice image...looks better without bottom branch..well captured