shadow/highlight (masked out some branches)
hue/sat (masked out bird and some branches applied gradient to sky)
burn a little of the branches
USM
resize
NI
Gaussain Blur
sharpen
history brush all but the birds head back to GB layer
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Next time try a shot with the sun behind you. Try to watch the birds and figure out ahead of time where they hang out. Makes it easier to get a background you like.
I think your composition is great in this photo. The bird is in the perfect spot of the frame. The backlighting seems too strong and it's hard too appreciate the details of the bird, especially the all important eye. Perhaps some fill flash would have helped to even out the exposure or a slightly different angle.
a aatractive, colourful bird, but unfortunately in this shot the details are just not clear enough to really appreciate his plumage.
Perhaps (as it was advanced editing) you could have selected the bird and lightened him a bit ?
You need fill flash, we've lost all detail in the shadows, which is most of the bird. also very fuzzy, probably from a huge crop or camera movement from not using a tripod.
I've never seen a bluebird before, we don't have them here. This photo is suffering, though. The exposure is just not right, lots of purple fringing caused by overexposure and the bird is underexposed so we can't see the detail.
There's a lot of green and blue "fringing" around the branches that I think is called "chromic abberation" or some such thing but is the result of shooting in a very bright light situation. Your best bet is to try underexposing a bit, or maybe use a neutral density filter (or so I've heard) to combat this.
When you're shooting directly into the light like this it's really hard to not underexpose your subject (the bird) and lose all the details, it's also nearly impossible to not get that purple fringing where the dark edges meet the light. If you go round the other side of the tree with the sun on your back you can usually avoid it. Not easy with birds I know, they often don't wait for you to find the right spot.
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