One of the main issues is your intent. Was it a dark scene and do you want to be faithful to reality? If not, it could do with some overall brightening. The underside of the bird is indistinct because it's not well differentiated from the background - do you want the bird to stand out from the background or do you want to represent its elusive nature by having it indistinct from the background? The usual way to process this would be to have the bird prominent and distinct, but that may not be your intention.

Whatever your intention is, processing this shot will get you thinking about the viewers' attention and how it can be directed. The main things that draw our attention are brightness, contrast, sharpness, colour strength, action (even if it's frozen as in a picture) and the principal components of any storytelling that the shot conveys. The first four are primarily to do with the PP adjustments that we may consider using.

The subject of your shot doesn't lend itself to being brightened but it seems to be a good candidate for added contrast, sharpening and saturation. It would also make sense to do the reverse to the background, or at least to avoid adding much in the way of contrast, sharpness and colour strength. Normally you wouldn't want to avoid those adjustments altogether because it would leave the background bland, but this case is an exception - assuming that you do want the bird to stand out.

I think brightening the bird as much as possible without it looking off is the right approach, and the background should be brightened as much as is determined by your preference. Removing bright spots from the background was also a good move. The other adjustments will differentiate the bird from its background.

I don't feel the image is too dark, but there is a lack of separation between the bird and it's background. There are a number of ways to create separation, i.e. brightness, contrast, color, hue, blur, etc. In this image, I didn't feel increasing bird brightness relative to the background was the best approach. However, increasing bird contrast did seem to work better, IMO. I also saw that there was a strong blue color cast in the bird which isn't characteristic of this species. Feather colors are different shades of gray, no blue. Additionally, the normal color of the legs are a bright orange, similar to the color of the beak and ring around eyes.

Personally, I liked the original crop more than the last crop. For this image, I prefer the environmental composition more than a portrait. The darks in the dark spot can be easily lightened to better match the rest of the background. I also feel that a light vignette helps further guide the viewer's focus to the bird. I also agree with your wife, that bright spot between the bird's legs had to go.

My usual "technique" is to brighten the bird and darken the BG. I use a number of methods to obtain that result. However, watching Steve Perry's video yesterday made me wonder about the opposite approach-darken the bird and brighten the BG. Unfortunately most of my images do not lend themselves to that approach as I often am fighting low light levels to start with. In this image of a Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush, in ACR, I brought down the BG and brought up the bird. I had to balance keeping the bird "black" with increasing the brightness. Shot with ISO of 2000 on Canon R5.

My question is: is the overall image too dark? Any other suggestions?

My usual "technique" is to brighten the bird and darken the BG. I use a number of methods to obtain that result. However, watching Steve Perry's video yesterday made me wonder about the opposite approach-darken the bird and brighten the BG. Unfortunately most of my images do not lend themselves to that approach as I often am fighting low light levels to start with. In this image of a Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush, in ACR, I brought down the BG and brought up the bird. I had to balance keeping the bird "black" with increasing the brightness. Shot with ISO of 2000 on Canon R5.

My question is: is the overall image too dark? Any other suggestions?

My usual "technique" is to brighten the bird and darken the BG. I use a number of methods to obtain that result. However, watching Steve Perry's video yesterday made me wonder about the opposite approach-darken the bird and brighten the BG. Unfortunately most of my images do not lend themselves to that approach as I often am fighting low light levels to start with. In this image of a Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush, in ACR, I brought down the BG and brought up the bird. I had to balance keeping the bird "black" with increasing the brightness. Shot with ISO of 2000 on Canon R5.

My question is: is the overall image too dark? Any other suggestions?

My usual "technique" is to brighten the bird and darken the BG. I use a number of methods to obtain that result. However, watching Steve Perry's video yesterday made me wonder about the opposite approach-darken the bird and brighten the BG. Unfortunately most of my images do not lend themselves to that approach as I often am fighting low light levels to start with. In this image of a Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush, in ACR, I brought down the BG and brought up the bird. I had to balance keeping the bird "black" with increasing the brightness. Shot with ISO of 2000 on Canon R5.

My question is: is the overall image too dark? Any other suggestions?

My usual "technique" is to brighten the bird and darken the BG. I use a number of methods to obtain that result. However, watching Steve Perry's video yesterday made me wonder about the opposite approach-darken the bird and brighten the BG. Unfortunately most of my images do not lend themselves to that approach as I often am fighting low light levels to start with. In this image of a Slaty-backed Nightingale-Thrush, in ACR, I brought down the BG and brought up the bird. I had to balance keeping the bird "black" with increasing the brightness. Shot with ISO of 2000 on Canon R5.

My question is: is the overall image too dark? Any other suggestions?