The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Song sparrows begin to show up at our feeders in late February and this phenomenon occurs every year in our area. This also signals that the arrival of red-winged blackbirds is not too far away. Song sparrows never stray far from cover and most of the surrounding branches were left in the scene to convey this characteristic for this species. The snow reflected so much light up on the belly that I had to dial down the highlights quite a bit to recover the feather detail.
Specific Feedback
There is a little bit of haloing and I tried to take care of the more obvious cases by using the rubber stamp tool on a layer set to “Darken”. How would you take care of this issue?
Technical Details
z9 180-400mm f4 + 1.4x TC engaged at 550mm (1/1250 sec at f8.0, ISO 1250) DeNoise, Crop for Comp, Levels, reduction in highlights, micro-contrast enhancement, rubber stamp tool for halo and orphaned branch removal…Jim
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
I like the composition with the sparrow and the colors in the image. I think you handled the brightness and exposure well - there is plenty of details in the whites. I am a little ambivalent about the top branch - I feel it makes it more cluttered and am not sure if it adds anything to the image. You may consider removing it.
I can see some haloing that you mention, especially in some of the oof branches. Not sure what can be done about it. It may just be the way the camera process the transition between darks and whites. It is quite minimal in the sparrow, so does significantly not affect the image quality.
Beautiful image, Jim. A big variation from our Song Sparrows, which are considerably darker in areas that are “white” in your image. I know there are some pretty easy ways of handling halos these days, but I don’t run across it often enough to remember how it’s done. I suspect there are a thousand or more videos out there purporting to solve that issue, the problem is to find one that works and is understandable.
Nice catch Jim. Critical focus on the bird showing nice details and exposure. Framing from the branches looks good to me. The haloing on the branches just seems from them being out of focus as they should be.
Nice look at the sparrow. Out in Oregon these sparrows are year round as are the Red-winged Blackbirds. The upper branch does add more a sense of environment.
