Yesterday was a wet day here, with on-off showers most of the day. The birds showing up at the deck feeder were getting pretty wet, out in the open. I took a few shots of this blue jay, with my Z8, pressing the 300mm f4 PF up against the nylon window screen which was the only thing between the lens glass and the bird. You can see a few tiny water droplets as well.
I love photos that look more like drawings or paintings. As most or all of you probably know, this window screen diffusion is often one good way to make it happen.
The image is heavily cropped, all of the surrounding deck top rail and metal feeder rod cropped out, with only some slight to moderate adjustments made to the exposure basics (in Lightroom Classic.) A bit of manual noise reduction as well, maybe not enough, I think it looks pretty good as is.
2nd shot is a screen capture showing the entire image with the crop area.
Looks like 25600 ISO on your screen capture, 1/5000th shutter?
You might want to look into 'Painterly Effects' for Lightroom for some further tips.
I am not finding fault with what you have done but I think there may be better methods to get to the results you would enjoy
Personally at times I have images that I would rather see as painted too. I think this one could use a bit more contrast and color and clarity.
Any reason you are shooting at such an extreme ISO? Working with a lower ISO image may give you a better base for making your artistic adjustments.
Nothing wrong with being creative, it is a great teacher! Hope to see you finding ways to improve what you are doing!
Karl
