I didn’t think this would crop down to a detailed image anyhow and I liked the oak tree it was perched on. I also liked the grooming pose with the partial eye showing.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
I did clone out a stray out of focus twig that crossed behind the perch right behind the swallow. Did I leave any traces?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Composition? Depth of Field?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Sony a6500, Sony FE200-600 @ 600 mm, hand held, f/8, 1/2000, iso 1000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped from a horizontal to 3428x4000 vertical (full height). Taken March 20th at 8:33 am under sunny skies.
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I like the grooming pose. Detail and color are good and I’m glad the eye shows. I could see cropping slightly above the leaf. I might also remove the branch coming up from the left lower corner and possibly a slight crop of the right to see if that makes a difference. You’re getting some nice VGS shots, which I have found are tough to get.
@Allen_Brooks Thanks for the comments. I looked at that darn lower left twig, but it looked like too much work. I’ll have to take another look. We have a fair number of Violet-greens nesting in our boxes, so they’re fairly tame and will become even more so as the spring progresses and they get used to us again.
As an environmental image, I think the twigs are part of the story. You must have a different species of swallow than I do because mine never land. I’ve seen one so far this year. Seems to be a slow spring migration; the only other new species is a rufous Hummingbird scene yesterday.
Dennis, I really liked the birds posture or pose in this image… 
With that said I thought I try to warm the FG bird and branch area up over the BG sky. Overall it was the blue cast I wanted to drop away from the FG area. I just selected the sky did an Invert > Layer > 85 Filter (50%) > Vibrance (15%).
Not sure it made an impact but I like the separation here from the sky… 
I like the use and the overall composition. I think it works well and a nice back side view of the swallow.
Something feels off with the color balance and / or processing to me though. It feels hazy. I did some work with dehaze which helped a little, but not a lot. A better solution was a curves adjustment layer working the blue and red channels to remove a blue/cyan cast. I pushed it a bit far intentionally to see if it seemed to make it more clear. I think it did. See what you think.
Thanks, @Keith_Bauer and @Paul_Breitkreuz For the reworks. Both of them are significantly improved over what I presented. I was thinking that it was looking a little dumpy and just didn’t want to pop, but the color cast just didn’t occur to me. It sounds like both of you accomplished pretty much the same thing using different techniques. While Keith may have carried it further I like the result. I’ll have to do some playing.
Nicely done. The composition works well. The tree and leaf are a nice balance for the swallow. I don’t see any traces of the removed branch. Of the three options I think I prefer the third. I am not much on pp’n and am quite surprised that working curve adjustment layers could bring out that much more detail.
Dennis, yes it is or was the blue/cyan cast I found being the main issue. No big thing as you have the neat composition and you can play around with the color selection as you see fits your personal taste…good to go !!
Nice behavioural shot, and I like the way you framed it. Interesting information with the reposts as well. I wonder why the cameras sometimes get it ‘wrong’… Anyway, fruitful post for the readers, so thanks for that ! Cheers, Hans
