Posing Basics White-crowned Sparrow

[Ned Bagno]

Hi,

Thanks for looking. I tried to go through the basic image adjustments as outlined in the Art of Bird Photography II. (Shadows/highlights, levels, curves, saturation and selective colors). Sliders are basically as defaulted in the book. Hopefully experience will allow me the courage to move the sliders ;-)

Olympus E-3 OM350mm f2.8 (Manual Focus Lens) TC1.4
ISO100 1/800

Ned

[Julie Brown]

Hi Ned. Nice HA, eye contact, and catchlight. Exposure looks good to me on this monitor (laptop screen). I would like the OOF flower in the BG if it was in another area in the image, but I think it is too distracting. It crowds the bird, so you might want to clone it out. Good capture of a cute little bird!

I use Lightroom so I can't comment on the Photoshop workflow. I'm sure you will get plenty of suggestions from the experts!:D

[Ned Bagno]

Hi Julie,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Which OOF flower are you talking about, the one below the bird?

Ned

Hi Ned. Nice HA, eye contact, and catchlight. Exposure looks good to me on this monitor (laptop screen). I would like the OOF flower in the BG if it was in another area in the image, but I think it is too distracting. It crowds the bird, so you might want to clone it out. Good capture of a cute little bird!

I use Lightroom so I can't comment on the Photoshop workflow. I'm sure you will get plenty of suggestions from the experts!:D

[Julie Brown]

Ned, you are welcome.

IMO, the flower behind the bird is the most noticeable. Now that you mention it, you could take out the other one too.:) I also like the blurred BG.

[Bob Miller]

Hi Ned....I agree with Julie....Taking out the oof flowers will improve the composition. You might also consider cropping from the LS

[Lance Peters]

Hi Ned - lots to like here - exposure looks good - like the pose and the eye contact, Personally I dont mind the OOF flowers - the branches on the LHS form some pretty strong shapes and do draw the eye away from the subject.
The BG is quite nice also - here I think Less would be more - just needs to be simplified a little.
Keep em coming :)

[Dave Mills]

Hi Ned, I feel you did an excellent job on the bird itself. Beautiful light,exposure and sharpness. The main vertical branch in the center to my eye seems to be dividing the image almost in half. To reduce that I might crop some off the left. For my taste I would remove the backround flowers and the one near the foot. Then I would crop the top a little above the green leaf to the left of the birds head...