Gray Jay Portrait.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Not sure if this close-up works for you or not, but its part of the portraits I've been having fun creating with various species lately. It helps to find tame subjects for this! It was nicely nestled in a spruce branch at eye level here, inspecting peanuts I had left for it and its mate. This species has particularly long and delicate feathers on its chest and belly...very long with thin spaced out barbs, unlike any other songbird species I've seen...

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/800s., f/7.1, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, small crop for comp, eye work to remove marbled glaze to it.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

The close-up works for me, for sure! Nice detail in the feathers - one can almost feel how fluffy it is! Love it, well done!

[Bradley James]

I think this works very nicely. I like the spruce needles framing up the bottom. I look forward to seeing more of these portraits

[Marina Scarr]

While this image is well done and I love all of those feather details and color palette, I keep on thinking about how much more I like the wider version.

[christopher galeski]

A nice image,sharp were it needs to be,and nice pose,well done.

[Richard Flack]

Lovely image Daniel. Awesome detail and nice pose. Not my kind of image but done extremely well as always.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Yep, I bet it doesn't hurt to have cooperative subjects for close-ups like this! I really like the concept of the foreground leaves/branches, but wish they were all in similar blur/focus.

Like always, nicely done!

I'd like to see, if you don't mind, the wider version that Marina mentioned.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys!!

Miguel, the "version" Marina speaks of is another image altogether but from the same perch and taken from much farther away...a photo that is artistically much stronger than this one I agree...but I always like a challenge to get close if possible :S3: Here is the image in question:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/118380-Gray-Jay

[Satish Ranadive]

Daniel Sir,
Excellent portrait in beautiful lights. Great details in feathers and very nice comp.

Regards,
Satish.

[gail bisson]

I love the IQ and the feather details but have to admit that it is a bit tight for my tastes.
Gail

[Randy Stout]

Daniel;

The tight crop really adds to the sense of him being all fluffed up, but overall it feels too squeezed for my tastes as well.

But, I am certainly in support of trying different approaches, as it is too easy to get homogenized and pasteurized and so uniform that nothing stands out!

Cheers

Randy

[Karl Egressy]

Great portrait shot, but I liked the full body version you posted earlier, Daniel.