Siberian or Asian Stonechat

[Tushar Dixit]

One from the last weekend's outing. Always perched atop bushes, this time could get it with decent BG. One of the difficult birds to expose properly due to its dark head and duller (or towards white) body.

EOS 7D with 400mm f/5.6L @ f/6.3, 1/800, ISO 200. Clicked near Pune in a grassland habitat. Basic PP plus cloned out a branch at left top corner.

C&C most welcome!

[Mrudul Godbole]

The head turn and the eye contact is nice. The clean background compliments the bird. Good details. Which part of Pune was this? Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Tushar,
Nice eye contact. Cute bird. It stands out due to the background. In this case, a narrow aperture, by around one stop, would have been great in capturing more details. The ISO was 200, so it could have been easily increased to 400. The blacks in the neck portion that was in shadow, has lost details. Overall, a nice image.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Sandesh Astgikar]

Nice cap

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Nice shot Tushar, agree with comments made. I have never tried cloning can someone help me to do it in LR
tfs

[Bibhav Behera]

The pose is nice. The background looks good. Agree that some blacks have lost details. Thanks for sharing.

[Tushar Dixit]

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions. I agree with Sabyasachi about using a narrower aperture for more DoF. Thanks once again!

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice shot Tushar, agree with comments made. I have never tried cloning can someone help me to do it in LR
tfs

Praveen,
In lightroom, go to Develop, and then on the right side just below the histogram, you will find the spot removal tool. Second one from the left. Click on that. Then you have to define the brush size. I use it for spot removal. One can clone other objects as well. For short cut, you can type Q. (All this is for windows. I have no idea about ligtroom shortcuts in mac).

A word of caution: When you use cloning apart from removing dust, the image wont be accepted in photo competitions and editorial purposes.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi