Last week I shared this picture of a White-crowned Sparrow buried in a spray of purple flowers and asked if I should keep it or not. What could I do to make it better?
I had some interesting replies:
Bajadreamer said, “Lots of problems (IMO) with this image, but if you wanted to save it, I would clone out the vegetation, including the dark limb in the background, selectively brighten the bird, darken the background, denoise it, and sharpen it.”
Emil Baumbach said, “This is a tough image to save. I might try a slightly tighter crop, lighten the bird and maybe use a vignette treatment.” There were others who suggested the tighter crop as well.
From Ron Zigler, “I go through this a lot. A ‘nice’ picture with qualifications. Great bird, great setting with colorful flowers, but the lighting could be better and, ideally, you wouldn’t have distracting branches—especially that large dark, shaded branch behind the bird’s head. So, while I would keep it, I would be mindful of both the upside and the downside.”
Kathleen Brandt offers, “If you keep it, “erase” the vegetation by the beak. that will take some time and patience, but the flowers are pretty and the bird is cute.”
The most interesting response was from Jim Babbitt who not only answered my question, he also took the time to re-edit the pic to illustrate his points! Here is what he came up with:
Note that his solution contained some of the recommendations made by other responders. He cropped it in tighter. He eliminated the large branch in the background that was behind the bird’s head. He also sharpened the image (and probably applied denoise). His comments seemed spot-on, “Only you can decide how much time you want to spend on any given image. For me, this would be a cull.”
The answer to, “Could This Pic Be Saved?” is a solid Maybe. As Jim said (and others inferred) it would take a lot of work to make it a GreatBirdPic. IMO this pic is not worth the time – spending an hour or two on this one would not yield a positive Return On Investment (time). I don’t think any amount of time would transform this shot into an Award Winner. Next time you have a pic that you really like because it has lots of positive attributes but there are some problematic issues with it, stop before diving in and ask yourself if it would worth your time.
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Amazing what can be done with today’s technology!