Rockin' Robin.......

[Barbara Ponder]

Well not sure it's really rockin' but it is for sure a Robin an American Robin to be exact. CC always welcome and appreciated

[dje]

Yeah lets rock tonight !

Nice capture Barbara, good detail and colour. Perhaps you could darken those bright spots in the background.

Dave

[pnodrog]

Agree totally with Dave. He is right and it saves typing...

[Stagecoach]

Very nice capture Barbara, you are getting good at these.

[IzzieK]

Right on Barbara. Dave is right. +1 to both of you. Well done!!!

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Dave Humphries]

Great detail Barbara,

You're certainly getting it all together here

I thought at first that was snow on the branch, but no, I think it is Lichen.

Good exposure in tricky lighting, yeah the top left is a bit bright, but be careful reducing it; don't overdo it, or it might look artificially 'grey' up there (given that we expect it to be bright).

Cheers, Dave

[Barbara Ponder]

Yeah lets rock tonight !

Nice capture Barbara, good detail and colour. Perhaps you could darken those bright spots in the background.

Dave

Thanks you and is this what you had in mind?

[Barbara Ponder]

Thank you Dave. I am trying to learn all I can. Spring will be here before you know it and the birds here will be amazing. I started photographing birds late in May of last year for the first time. It was with my older camera so I am excited at what this year with new equipment and skills learned will produce! Oh and definitely not snow. This far south that is a rarity that I would welcome but alas fear won't happen anytime soon.

[Barbara Ponder]

Thank you Izzie

[Barbara Ponder]

Thanks Grahame, practice makes perfect, or so they say

[Barbara Ponder]

Thank you John

[Barbara Ponder]

Thank you L. Paul

[flashback]

Barbara, perhaps just a bit more on the hot spot directly over the robin's head. Other than that great picture. They can't show up soon enough for me!

[JR1]

nice and sharp and well framed

gear used please ?

[Barbara Ponder]

nice and sharp and well framed

Thank you

gear used please ?

Canon 70D 300mm

[FrankMi]

Wow! What a great capture Barbara! I can see why you named it 'Rockin' Robin'. Looks like he is dancing to the music!

[Brownbear]

Beautiful capture, and the edit is perfect... It's fun to watch you have a go at all these birds, and I too think you're doing wonderfully.

[cuilin]

love the little details in the feathers. good light and exposure too. nicely done!

[Geoff F]

The edit is an improvement but it doesn't go far enough for me.

I would start by cropping the top to reduce as much of the problem as possible. Which will probably mean going square.

What I do with this sort of scene is to use a Curves adjustment layer with the blend mode set to Luminosity and reduce the highlights, but keep an eye on the shadows as well. Then edit the mask as required. But I'm assuming you can work with layers; otherwise I suppose you could try an adjustment brush.

These edits usually work OK with care but sometimes I have to create a 'safety zone' with a selection to allow me to get close to the subject but without the effect creating problems on the subject edges.

Something else which I often use is to create a selection with somewhere around 10 pixels feather to exclude the bird, you don't have to be exact as long as you are reasonably close, then do a blur or use the noise reduction option with the retain details setting fairly low.