I was rather confounded upon first seeing this bird hopping around the feeders. There are so many “brown birds” around this time of year with all the juveniles of every species. I thought at first it might be some kind of sparrow. It wasn’t until I began processing it that I realized it is a Dickcissel, albeit a juvenile (I believe). Gender is difficult to determine, but I believe it’s a female. As it matures, that eyebrow and the line below her chin will become much more yellow. Normally a bird of the North American prairies, I was surprised to see her this deep in the woodland. Just wandering through on her way to her wintering grounds in Venezuela, I guess. I’ve always found this bird to be very similar to the Meadowlark, though Dickcissel’s are noticeably smaller.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any. I left the crop a bit loose on purpose. Too much?
Technical Details
Canon 60D, Canon 70-300 IS USM Zoom, f/8, 1/180 sec., ISO 1250, Hand-held. Processed in ACR and PSE 2020 for exposure and cropping. Topaz De-noise.
Pretty nice image Terry. The pose is great and the nice background works well for the image. Bird is a lacking detail, but I’m guessing that is a function of Denoise.
Crop: You asked about it being a bit loose. That doesn’t bother me at all. What does bother me is the placement of the bird in the crop. I think it needs more room on the right and less on the left.
Here’s an example using Content Aware cropping. The right side won’t look right since it just used more stuff from that side but you get the idea.
Thanks @Keith_Bauer. Yes, that crop looks better. The image had a lot of noise, taken in fairly low light at high ISO, and I had to use more De-noise than I would have liked. I’ll run it through High Pass and see if I can recover some detail without making it look weird.
@terryb I would stop worrying so much about noise on the bird. Apply the noise reduction to the background if needed, but mask off the bird. If the choice is detail in the plumage and some noise, I’ll take than any day over mushing all of the details just to remove the noise.
Dickcissels always cause me grief by showing up in view way out of range. Pose is nice but the noise reduction has cost you a lot of feather detail. Adding more room helps the comp as well…Jim
I love the pose, Terry. Others have discussed the shortcomings. The noise is interesting. A mere 14 years ago, when I first got into bird photography, the mantra was to never do noise reduction on the bird itself. With better cameras and software, that’s not always so, but it bears remembering that you do want to keep that feather detail.
Nice catch with a good pose in good light and a nice BG! I’d just crop from the left as @Keith_Bauer did, but clone out the bright area on the left edge – not sure it needs that much added room on the right. I always do NR on a new layer and if it goes too far I can lower the opacity of the layer or mask the subject at low opacity to preserve a bit of detail. It looks like you had a good starting image to work with.
I like the ready to fly pose you captured here but I have to agree with @Keith_Bauer about keeping detail in the feathers at all costs. I also agree with him about the position of the bird in the frame. He needs more room to fly into. If you have more room in the raw file (since I doubt you shot this square), you could add back room on the right side. Pretty sharp considering you were hand holding. I agree with @Diane_Miller about cloning out the bright green area on the left edge. It’s an eye grabber.
