The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
A house finch couple has been visiting the birch tree in our backyard recently, and I wanted to capture them with the snowy background.
Specific Feedback
I’d love thoughts on processing and composition.
Looking at them side by side here I’m immediately struck by the difference in size between the two birds. Do you think this is an issue if I’m presenting the two images together?
Technical Details
Nothing too funky done in post, just WB and tone control changes in LRC.
A nice pair of shots, Matt. I really like the female in particular because the environment looks so cool. She’s framed very nicely by the limbs and catkins. I do wish she’d given you just enough head turn to pick up a catch light in her eye, but they don’t always cooperate. The male is also nice, and I like the perch a lot. I might consider cloning over the out of focus stuff to the right of the bird as it’s so dim that it almost looks like a smudge on the image. You might also look at trying to get some detail in the bright areas on the side of the bird just forward of the tail. The local adjustment brush in LR often works well for that sort of thing by pulling down the highlights and bringing up the texture a bit.
I cleaned up the “floating” branch immediately to the right of the bird and took a pass at the local adjustments you mentioned. I don’t have any real experience with this kind of treatment, hopefully this works!
Nice job on the bright spots on the bird, Matt. Lightroom isn’t really very good at cleaning stuff up in the background. I go to PS for that functionality. However, I like what you did.
Hi Matt, I like both of your shots…nice representations of this pair, and your further editing helped to improve. I like the size of the male (enough for the bird and habitat) and wish the female were the same. The catkins add a lot of visual interest with their shape.
Nice shots Matt and I like the reposts. I could see taking down highlights even more in the image of the male. The crop works well in the image of the female as Jim suggested. Agree with Dennis on missing the catchlight on the female but the nice environment makes up for that a good bit.
