Male Northern Cardinal

[Rick Sedivec]

My fist post here. I hope you like it.

This photo was taken at the beginning of this month when there was still snow on the ground. Lately the male cardinals of the area have been singing their songs in the morning and the spring migrants are starting to show up. How exciting to know that more birds will be arriving soon.

D200 200-400mm VR @340mm
F/5.6 ISO 400 Cropped to vertical.

[Rene Quenneville]

Beautiful picture for a first post. What was your shutter speed? There seems to lack some sharpness around the eye. If you could use f/8 instead, you could increase the depth of field on the bird. Try to recrop the bird, removing some of the wing in the back but putting the eye more to the right in the frame.

[Arthur Morris]

This is a nice image that simply lacks pop.... An increase in contrast would likely help. The strange thing is that the reds look desaturated yet in spots appear to be lacking detail.... Later and love, artie

[Jody Melanson]

Welcome to BPN! Nice portrait. I agree the whole picture could use some sharpening. Also a little boost to the contrast would help.

[Robert Amoruso]

Rick,

Beautiful bird and soft light, plus the catch light all working for you here. Since you said you cropped vertical I am hoping you got room in front of the bird. AboveI added canvas, made a selection rectangular marquee tool of the area in front of the beak, used the transform function (Ctril-T) on the selection and dragged the center handle on the left to the edge of the canvas to expand the BG.

I then did a local contrast enhancement using USM at A=30, R=60, T=0 and change the opacity to 70%. i flatten the file. Created a new BG copy and did USM four times (1 at A=175, R=0.2, T=0 and then 3 at A=125, R=0.2, T=0) I hope you like.

P.S. I was working on this when the others posted.

[Rick Sedivec]

1/2500 SEC would allow for more DOF since I was shooting from a tripod.

Thanks for the feedback. Here is another try at image placement.

[Arthur Morris]

I like the 2nd crop better than the first. RAM's work on the color and contrast is superb Thanks Robert.

later and love, artie

[Jim Poor]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the triangular-ish reflection in the eye along with the catch-light. I'd work on removing the reflection which shouldn't be to hard. When I first saw the image, I thought the bird was in mid-blink and the eye has bugged me ever since.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Very lovely capture and agree with the above comments. Thanks for sharing.