Freshly Dipped

Roger Tory Peterson describes the Purple Finch as: “Like a sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.” It looks like the juice is still running on this specimen. He took an enthusiastic bath, but seemed to almost always be keeping an eye on me. Even though I’m in a blind, I don’t use a curtain, but sit toward the back, and the birds still seem to have an awareness of my presence-some more than others.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

Anything. I did a lot of cleanup on the background in this one and cloned over a few bits of debris from the beach edge that crept into the bottom of the frame.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Anything.

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

Sony a6500, FE200-600 @ 600 mm, tripod with ballhead and Sidekick mount, f/8, 1/640, iso 2000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Noise reduction with Neat Image and feather enhancement with Topaz Detail 3. Cropped to 5304x3984. Some crop from bottom with canvas added on top. aken May 31st at 1:12 pm under cloudy skies.

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1 Like

I really like the sharpness and light in this image, Dennis. The water drops does make it look freshly painted. I can see what appear to be some artifacts above the finch both on the left (in front of the beak) and right (in the dark area behind the head).

I saw one pair in our yard earlier this year - took me a few minutes to realize what it was.

This looks like a painting. The area just to the left (ours) of the bird in the background rock could be smoothed out a little bit more, Dennis. The zig-zag-ey OOF line in the rock looks a little bit weird. I would also clone out that one specular highlight just below the beak. Looks really cool otherwise.

Very sharp with wonderful detail. That is one bright bird. The color saturation seems a tad too much but this was a wet bird and it probably looks like this. You could certainly clone the specular highlights on the rock to the right of the bird.