Loggerhead Shrike

[Barry Ekstrand]

Photographed today at Arthur Storey Park in Houston - I didn't have my 400mm f5.6L lens with me so this was taken with my Tamron 70-300mm f4-5.6 zoom lens. This is the first time I photographed one of these guys - he landed right in front of me on a sign and then jumped from one perch to another. I got him in some flowers also but in those part of his tail is behind some of the vegetation, I have some work to see if I can improve it in PS or not.

Canon 5D Mark III, Tamron 70-300mm zoom lens
Av mode, 300mm, f5.6, ISO 1000, 1/500 sec
Nik Define NR, crop for aesthetics

All comments appreciated.

Barry


129849

[gail bisson]

Love the pose of the shrike and the perch and the comp.
Blacks are quite blocked in the tail and wonder if you can get some more detail in PP with a little bit of TLC.
If you are not anti-cloning I would consider cloning out the leaf that touches the birds neck,
Gail

[Satish Ranadive]

Magnificent image. I like the perch with nice artistic leaves,over the shoulder look back pose,nice colors and composition.

Regards,
Satish.

[Shawn Zierman]

Very nice perch to see this species on. Wish we had these further north, (Minnesota), but usually no, just the northern shrikes, which seem far less tolerant of photographers than this species. I think you handled the exposure pretty well. It looks like you used flash, though it's not listed in the techs? The sharpness of the bird, particularly the head, is making me wonder if the focus did not lock on the leaves behind the bird, as they appear sharper than the face of the subject itself.....

[PhilCook]

Nicely composed among the leaves, liking the over the shoulder stare....but, yes, sadly a little soft looking

[Barry Ekstrand]

Thanks all for your comments and suggestions. Shawn is correct on the flash that I neglected to include in the description. I had flash on low power, high speed sync with the Better Beamer as I had been trying to photograph cardinals flying in the shadows of trees.

On the softness, unfortunately I believe this is the characteristics of this lens. I shot a bunch of photos of the Shrike as he was right in front of me and this is representative of what I got. The Tamron 70-300mm VC Di was one of my early additions after I got my first DSLR (a Canon T2i). It is a decent low cost zoom but its images will never be mistaken for those of a Canon L lens. When I was out this day I unfortunately did not have my "bird lens" (Canon 400mm f5.6L) with me so I had to make do with the Tamron zoom that was in the bag.

Barry