About the Image(s)

I was taking a break from taking photos of flowers in my wife’s backyard garden when I heard a cardinal singing nearby. He was perched high in a neighbor’s pine tree when I took this photo about 40 feet from the chair I was sitting in. This male and his mate are frequently visitors to our backyard for over the past 5 years. They can live up to 15 years, so we are pleased whenever we see them visiting our feeders.
Handheld full frame camera body, 400mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 100, aperture priority.
1x1 crop, adjustments to highlights, shadows, whites, and blacks. Topaz denoise & sharpen. Applied a mask on the bird to boost color a little and applied another mask on the eye itself to darken and increase contrast.