Thanks for the comments everyone, especially the detailed one from routerguy666. My score was a real reality check, especially the 3.5 from commenters, but I appreciate the comments and have learned a lot and hope to continue to improve. I'm trying to learn PS and tried a few things on this I hadn't done before attempting to improve it. Maybe I overdid the saturation, but it did make it more like Lorikeets really look in good light.
This is not meant to be mean, but the best thing about this photo is what you can learn for the next time you try and shoot something like this.
A few things that jump to my mind
- Patience. Wait till the subject is in a more suitable position. In this case that would be not sitting on a rock with bright sun spots on it that will make it difficult/impossible to properly expose.
- Focus. Might be some hand shake, maybe you focused and then recomposed - hard to say but from feet to beak the focus on the bird is off a bit. You have a good camera, don't be afraid of iso 800 or 1600 if the situation demands a higher shutter speed to account for subject movement (or to counteract the espresso you had with breakfast!) edit to add: did you have your IS engaged? Did you wait half a second for it to spin up and stablize?
- Go easy on the saturation. If you've properly exposed the subject (dependant on the previous two points) then you should not need to give the colors much of a bump in post. I know I am not alone in saying that I would start bleeding off points just for the extreme saturation of this shot.
I so love birds... This is a good movement shot with lots of rich color. The exposure is a bit on the bright side, but otherwise I like the composition.
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