House Sparow (M)

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Folks;

Captured this male House Sparrow at my neighbour's yard abutting a park where her light is much superior to mine where I am surrounded with white adobe buildings. Also a few more birds than I have.

Comments and redos always welcome & very much appreciated

Gus

I removed a lot of twigs & ugly branches from BG with Brush Tool

Olympus E-3, Zuiko ED 50-200mm f2.8-3.5 SWD, @ 400 mm equiv. Gitzo GM3550 MonoPod
AP: F/5.6, 1/640s, ISO 200, -0.30eV, CWA, sRGB, AWB

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Gus,

Greetings. I can't get past the bg having visible processing artifacts... horizontal lines, dark halo all around the subject. Needs work.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Richard Unsworth]

Nice pic Gus; I see the BG is now clean:) works well with the bird color

exposure looks good but whole bird, especially the head could do with a touch more sharpening if possible


tfs

[Dave Leroy]

Very nice pose Gus and perch looks just right.

I agree with comment about sharpness. I am not sure why photo seems to be lacking here unless it was a big crop or had some NR run on top of bird.

Lighting does look good here, now just need to get one in open so less work on bg.

Dave

[Maureen Allen]

Hi Gus -

Lovely bird. I like the perch and the composition a lot. The dark background really makes the bird stand out. Nice!

I agree some sharpening would help improve the image. Also, there does seem to be some pp artifacts above the bird's back. Maybe a little magic with the cloning tool would help with that

Maureen

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Folks;

Thank you very much for looking. I have over sharpened in the past so many times, I'm now gun shy about doing it now. Had a major surgery to my eye about 18 month;s ago and still healing.

Also darkened BG with levels.

Is this redo any improvement?

Best regards

Gus

[Mike Wilhelm]

Oh, yes. I like this much better. Clear eye, good color, sharp. Delightful!

[Julie Kenward]

I agree...the repost gets the head much sharper and the artifacts appear to be gone. Very nice HA Gus but I'm having trouble believing anyone in your neighborhood has more birds in their yard than you do.

[Maureen Allen]

Repost looks great, Gus!

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Folks;

Thanks for looking and your informative comments.

Jules, you taught me that darkening levels for making dark greys, greens etc to level out streaky BG's

My neighbour & I have about the same amounts of birds, I have the Curve-billed Thrasher daily, she has the Northern Cardinal daily which I woud prefer, we change around Hawks. Great Horned Owls & Ravens in extra tall trees we both nhave within 100' of our gardens. She gets the Oriel's occasionally, I get the Cedar Waxwings a few times. We get a lot of birds because we are at the foot of Madera Canyon, one of the best birding spots in America.

Take care

Warm hugs to all.

Gus