First Post. (Beginner) Excited to learn, make mistakes and share!

Thank you for taking the time out to view this. Critiques and comments welcome!

Welcome. Please post more.

I am not a beginner and have utterly failed to every get a good, clear, shot of a cardinal. Yours is good.

It's not uncommon for someone to get interested in photography and fall in love with selective coloring. It's more of a short term infatuation, though, and more veteran photogs tend to fall out of love with it. The thing is that it doesn't make up for an otherwise boring photo. The "treatment" becomes more interesting than the subject.

Of course, if you are going to use selective coloring, this is a good subject for it. I would love to see some more of what you are doing.

Also, than you for contributing to the critiques for others.

Thank you so much for taking the time out to post a response :) It's true what you said about selective coloring. Really I did it for this photo because my father loves cardinals and black and white images. Just decided to give him both. Though it can be interesting, it's not something I see myself dedicating too much time into. I want to learn to make my images stand out with out it, of course :) Anyways, I'm looking forward to posting more and seeing what you think. Anything helps!

Thanks again!

Welcome DMG, nice first up post. As you have made this a selective colour post I assume your P.P. skills should be up to cloning out those small twigs next to the bird especially the one that sticks up from its back. Keeping the area immediately around your subject clear will help the image IMO. Had the whole image been B & W the bird would not have stood out nearly as well, but I suspect the green OOF background would have contrasted nicely had this been a full colour image.
I also noticed a bit of yellow fringing on the tail and at the back of the head , should this be there ?

Hello there! Thank you for your post.

You certainly brought some things to my attention that I ordinarily wouldn't have looked out for, such as the area around the subject (bird). Also I did notice the yellow, I have to go back and touch that up. I'm teaching myself as far as post processing images. So much to learn still. So thank you.