Song Sparrow, Pennsylvania, USA
November 2025
Nikon D850
f/6.3
1/1000 sec
600mm
ISO 1250
I take regular walks in a park local to my home and, sometimes, carry my camera. I prefer shooting large land animals, preferably predators. The only fstoppers contest entry of mine that’s been selected was of an Alaskan brown bear, but my home in Pennsylvania is short on those, so here’s a song sparrow. There’s not much story. I saw the bird, took a few frames, and it flew away. This probably isn’t really in my top three images of 2025 but the sunset light on the subject was some of best I saw this year. In addition to the usual sorts of global changes to tone and contrast, I emphasized the light on the bird. It was beautiful light and I wanted to be sure it was the star of the show. I deliberately left the sparrow a bit small in the frame to retain some sense of its world.
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