White winged crossbill

[Steve S]

Took these in feb. and never edited them. Any critique welcome.

Canon 40D
Canon 300f/4L + 1.4TC

[arith]

I like the second one most, it has a more personal appeal; but they are both smashing shots.

[wjh31]

The pattern on the feathers breaks up the edge a bit, which leaves the bird a little less we defined from the background than id like. Maybe try and shrink the DOF if you can PP

[Dave Humphries]

Maybe try and shrink the DOF if you can PP

Well, you can use a blur brush on the twigs I guess.

[Colin Southern]

I couldn't name 3 birds - how on earth do you remember the names of all of them?

[wjh31]

Well, you can use a blur brush on the twigs I guess.

Thats about what i meant, mask then gaussian on the background or something, maybe a slight desat on the background, something to help the bird stand out just a little more...

[Dave Humphries]

Thats about what i meant, mask then gaussian on the background or something, maybe a slight desat on the background, something to help the bird stand out just a little more...

Absolutely

Maybe it's the artist in me (but more likely an aversion to masking and layers ), but I just do those things with a careful wipe around with a feathered edge and 30-50% opacity brush tool. I do this for both blur and desat, and would only tackle the areas/twigs that need it, repeating as necessary to build up the effect, rather than doing everything in one uniformly applied hit. It just works for me - I'm not saying it's right or necessarily better

I do make extensive use of zooming in out and vastly differing brush sizes to get it right though.

Cheers,

[Steve S]

Thanks for the input guy's. Appreciate it.