Naturally Painted

Nice light, excellent pose and wonderful setting!

Howard,
I really like this shot, Natural and with a very real feel, the foreground and background are very nice and compliment the Bunting well. Thanks for the Tech talk - lesson.

Thanks for the processing details. Another beauty Howard

What a beauty Howard. Terrific colors and superbly processed. Everything blends seamlessly. Love the title.

Beautiful artistic work again, Howard. Iguess I'm a fiend for cropping. I would take some off the bottom here.

Hi Roger,
I can't take more off the bottom without changing the entire comp.
I suppose I could compose square, but that would not leave me as much resolution..This was shot vertically.
I compose in standard print ratio's - i.e. 4:5. 2:3, etc.
It's a good idea to do it this way, because when it comes time to print, you don't have to recompose or chop-off some of the image after the fact..
Capiche?

Another exceptional image, Howard. I am always amazed at the color of this bird. No issues with your post processing.

Always a nice looking bird. And always a surprise at how they can still blend into the foliage.

A couple of comments/questions motivated by your notes:

1. If you shoot in raw and convert with Adobe Camera Raw then it shouldn't matter what "picture style" you have set on the camera. That's only used for in-camera processing of jpegs as far as I know. With Nikons if you use their conversion software (Nikon Capture) then the picture parameters (saturation, sharpening, etc.) are used in the raw conversion. I don't know about Canon's raw converion application but would expect it to act as Nikon does.

2. My philosophy is that the subject dictates the composition; not the aspect ratio of general purpose frames. I too would crop the bottom of this to eliminate the OOF greenery in the bottom left.

Beautiful capture. The entire color palette is fantastic. Great pose, wonderful environment. Love it

Rich,
You are correct. I shoot raw, and the camera "picture style" preset is irrelevant.
I know this, but had a brain fart Thank you for pointing that out.
As far as philosophies go, that's your approach & I respect that.
But I try to sell and few prints now & then to help support my "hobby".
Much harder to do that without a standardized framing ratio.
Post script: I have removed that line from the text, & thanx again.

Alternate squared comp from vertical @ full width, eliminating most of the OOF leaves BLC.

These have to be one of the most colorful birds in North America. Great image. The focus and detail are right on and the environment really adds to the feeling of the image.

The alternate composition looks good: it maintains the feel for setting while making the bunting a bit more prominent in the frame.

Very beautiful bird in it's environment. Not the tiniest nit from me - excellent!
Sandy

Wonderful shot of a bird I have never seen. I also like the re-post much better as my eye goes right for the bird, nice job in getting this shot.

Great capture of a lovely bird and setting.

Very nice photo of this beautiful bunting in great habitat Howard. I like both compositions, but personally like the second version better.

Ken Archer

Excellent Howard! Beautiful colors and composition. Love the habitat surrounding the Bunting.

Ray