A male Cardinal sitting in one of my trees. A bit overcast today but enough light on him (with some dodging assistance) to make this interesting. And see, I told you the birds are watching me!
PP - converted from RAW, cropped, 2nd layer (Gaussian blur, merged in multiply mode), dodged bird, cloned out bright branches, increased contrast, added border, resized, sharpened.
Wow, he's pretty! You've done a great job of making him the focal point and subduing the background, and I like the faint hint of the background branch following the line of the bird. Beautiful!
Although the subject is not in tack sharp detail the softness of the cardinal almost lends itself to soft brush strokes of a paintbrush. It also helps convey the feel of touch - that the feathers of this bird are silky soft. I love the bold soft reds that color the otherwise muted scene. It is the splash of red that automatically draws our eye. My only critique is that I wish that it was a tad brighter overall so that the back half of the bird is not so dark compared to the sunlight front.
That's a sweet shot. I think cardinals are one of the prettiest of the wild birds that we have here in Fl too. There is a family of them that comes to eat the feed that my parrots drop out of their yard cages. The BG in this shot is just perfect.
I only saw these birds last year with images that Pat patio127 posted in one of the side challenges.
The softness of the image and the colours in the bird are amazing. It looks like it might be getting quite cold there the way his feathers are all fluffed up. Excellent DOF with the restricted light.
Stunning , mary- I did not know the Cardinal was your state bird ! We have a few pairs in our woods this winter-beautiful birds & you did justice to this guy :)
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
