Rewarded With An Indigo Bunting.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I took some drives along some backroads not too far from home lately and on a certain occasion, on a hunch, I decided to veer off onto a few roads I'd never been on before. I "discovered" a few gems as far as locations go and explored a bit more. On my way back while driving slowly on one of the gravel roads I came upon a clearing in the woods and heard what I thought may be an Indigo Bunting (I was not 100% positive as I'd only previously seen a few from far). From the now stopped car I put on this species' song and within a few seconds two of them came to investigate!

Well, my heart almost skipped a beat and I got to work to get some few images of this amazing bird. Luckily I almost always have a few perches in the trunk just for these types of instances...but here it chose a naturally placed flower stem from the field next to my setup. My first ever photographs of an Indigo Bunting...quite a reward I think!

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/640s., f/7.1, ISO 800, natural light, handheld (lens resting on car window opening), cropped for composition, one distracting OOF stem removed bewteen subject and right edge, darkened pupil, NR to the BG.

[jack williamson]

A fine image, just enough environment not to be cluttered, exposure and sharpness good, bg great. It might be me but I think I see a touch of magenta in this bird. Congratulations for your success, I really need to look into audio.

Jack

[Marina Scarr]

Lovely capture, Daniel, and super perch, vegetation and BG.

[Don Railton]

This is beautiful Dan.. love the vegetation and the soft green BG.

DON

[Girish Prahalad]

always exciting to have such encounters!
lovely setting & comp. IQ, colors & BG look great.

[Joe Murphy]

Beautiful shot Dan, the bird pops right out of the green foliage.

[Loi Nguyen]

Daniel, beautiful image. Love the sharpness of the bird and the perch. I find the purple OOF flower on the top left attracted my eye away from the bird a little bit. Other than that, love the composition as well.

loi

[David Smith]

Daniel.. Beautiful image.. Like the HA, the perch and the composition. The exposure and sharpness is spot on. Very, very nice..

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Wonderful reward Daniel! Looking forward to seeing some more if you have them!

About the perches, do you stand them up on tripods or do you use zip-ties to hang them off of existing branches? Then do you cover yourself (kwik camo style?). Just curious as you always get so close to these guys!

Miguel

[Satish Ranadive]

Daniel Sir,
Excellent image of beautiful bird. Very nice perch and BG.
Love the frame.

Regards,
Satish.

[Shawn Zierman]

Beautiful image Dan. Love the quality of the natural perch giving under the weight of the bunting. And for visual balance, the bg veg to the left of the perch really works well. I enjoy the splotches of purple/blue in the frame, but do wish they were less edge elements and more contained in the scene. All and all, big congrats on this one.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hey Miguel, thanks (and others too!).I do have some mini tripods for that and yes I do also use some zip-ties (useful for barbed wire fencing). Many of the perches, especially dry branches or dry mullein stalks, I just plant straight in to the ground. I often do conceal myself in a pop-up tent, but never tried the kwik camo. The Ameristep ones are great. This image, and many of the ones I posted recently, were all from inside my vehicle parked along country roads.