Before & After: Red-Winged Blackbird

1/320 | f/11 | ISO 320 | 1000 mm

Read on to see the before and the processing to get to the after ...

• In Camera Raw (Lightroom): Brought the exposure up 1.5 stops (in hindsight I would have rather shot at a higher ISO - possibly 800 - to get the same exposure and not have to bring in extra noise from the shadows)
• There was a twig between the camera and the Blackbird, and you can see it going right through his head. I used the patch tool in Photoshop to smooth this out - easy fix.
• Ok, this next edit might be considered a little bit of cheating. When I brought the exposure up, I noticed that the eye lid was closed and there was a large reflection of nearby twigs on it. So instead of looking like a real eye, it had the resemblance of a glass eye. Luckily, I had another image where I could extract the eye and replace the one in this image. It was a fairly simple fix with layers and it made a world of difference. 
• Cropped and resized for web (1200 px wide, 72 dpi)
• Sharpened for web

That's it!