Through The Window

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

I am just a disabled woman at home in my wheelchair and happened to pick up my camera to capture this beautiful display one afternoon through my bedroom window. I do this often as i am unable to get outside all the time.

Technical Details

ISO 280 315MM oev f5.3 1/125s

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Jamie, These are lovely birds. Are they mourning doves? You’ve made a nice image here with a fine composition. Do you edit your images? The image looks a bit soft and can use some noise reduction and sharpening. If you are using LR Classic, I would first use the detail panel and click on denoise. You then get a slider to set the amount of noise to remove. After running this feature you will get another .dng file. You can then remove the pipe in the lower right corner. Finally, you may want to sharpen the image. I use Photo AI, but any sharpening program will work. You have a fine image here. Keep up the window photography.

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Hi Jamie! :slight_smile:

Welcome to NPN! I am very happy that you decided to join us! :slight_smile:

What a wonderful composition!
The fact that both birds are facing the same way with the same head tilt is awesome.
I’m not exactly sure what species this pair happens to be but there are a few bird ID experts here so hopefully one of them will chime in soon.

May I ask what kind of software you use to process your images?
I noticed that this came up with a “Display P3” color space, I’m not familiar with that color space but it seems to match sRGB just fine on my monitor.
From what I can find, Display P3 has a larger color range than sRGB so it’s possible that it could effect certain monitors I suppose but that’s just a guess. I suggest using sRGB as the export color space if your software has that option (just for the export though).
I always work with a higher color range when editing, then export as sRGB for internet sharing to insure everyone else views it the same way. Please disregard the sRGB information if you’re already familiar with it.

This image is so well composed that I couldn’t help but do a little editing to try improving an already awesome image. I hope you don’t mind me doing that.
I added a bit of contrast to the background, then added a tiny bit of yellow and red color to the birds, then done a little noise reduction and sharpening as @Larry_Greenbaum suggested.
Also, I removed the small section of pipe in the lower right corner (also as Larry recommended) and I removed a couple of spots in the background using a removal tool and a cloning tool in Photoshop (Ps).

Most people come here for suggestions on ways to improve images and techniques, in addition, most of us enjoy sharing images as a way of communicating with other like minded photographers (part of our friendly and talented community :slight_smile: )

I hope you’re able to get outside now and then, although, it is rather hot these days (at least in central NC, USA). Meanwhile please feel free to post what you can capture from the window! :slight_smile:

The edit below may not align with what you want and that’s OK, this is just my take on it so it’s certainly nothing more than my subjective opinion. :smiley:

Welcome aboard, Jamie!! :smiley:

Hi Jamie. Welcome to NPN and the Avian Forum. I really like the poses you got from these birds (and I haven’t been able to figure out what they are. If you’d care to tell us where you’re from we might be able to have a better idea. You’ve gotten some excellent advice from Larry and Merv and I can’t really add much processing advice. You might ask whoever sets up your bird feeders to put up some natural looking perches and change them fairly often. A good way to do that is to make a setup with pvc pipes and you can just stick branches in the ends of them-a little imagination and practice can result in some really attractive perches. Ask them to make sure the perches are pretty much parallel with the window and on the far side of the feeders, so the birds will face you when they land on them. An awful lot of wonderful bird images have been taken through windows and they’re actually starting to use one-way glass in the fancier blinds at destination bird photography locations.

Keep it up and I look forward to seeing a lot more of your work here.

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Welcome, Jamie!! You’ve found a very nice place to hang out and hone skills!

If you could tell us more about your processing software and skills, that would help. These days so much can be done after capturing an image.

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Hi Jamie, Welcome to NPN! Quite cool poses with the birds gazing down in sync. Good advice above I think. Thanks for sharing and looking forward to seeing more.

Hi Jamie, I too shoot through the window a lot for my bird shots. It is amazing that the windows don’t even have to be sparkling clean. The focus is on the bird outside. So glad you have birds to photograph. I know for me when I can’t get out (caregiving for my husband with dementia) that it is a real help to me to get a few bird shots through the window. Thank you for sharing this image. I like what Mervin did, as the extra pipe coming into the image didn’t add anything to the shot. Nice composition.

Excellent advice Larry. Thank you

Hi Jamie, welcome to NPN. What a great image with them both looking the same way. I’m fairly certain these are juvenile European Starlings. Nice catch.

Cheers,
David

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Hi Jamie
Knowing when to pick up a camera and correctly framed and photograph interesting bird is more than have the battle. Thank you for sharing.
Peter

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