Badlands Cedar Waxwing

[kevin Hice]

Shot this Cedar Waxwings breeding ritual in the ND Badlands. Shot on dead sage brush. Processed Dpp4 photo shop levels sharpened unmask,patch and clone tool to remove small branches.
Camera 5D Mark 1V
Lens 300f2.8L IS 11
Shooting Mode AV 7.1
Shutter speed 1/1000
ISO 640
Converter 2x 111

[Mike Hitchen]

You have caught a great interaction, kevin. I think you could reduce the blank space top and right a bit.

[Alex Becker]

Agree with Mike regarding the crop but I really like this. I like the interaction, the perch, light, BG colors and details look nice. I wonder if you could get just a *bit* more definition on the left ones eye but not a big deal at all. TFS

[Glenn Pure]

Kevin, I really like this bird and the wonderful interaction you've captured - your timing was excellent. If the shot had been mine, I would have done a tighter crop all around particularly cutting on the right, top and bottom (latter would also help by removing some distracting twigs in the bottom left). There are some minor issues with blown color channels. At the moment, parts of the lower yellow flank of the left bird is blown in the red channel. Same is true to a lesser extent with the yellow tails, the white on the left bird and some of the highlights on the twigs. Moving the white point further to the right in the RAW processing and darkening highlights might do the job. I also agree that the dark parts of the birds' faces could benefit from being pulled up a little. You could also try pulling back the overall exposure just a whisker in the RAW processing? In making these adjustments, the risk is flattening the contrast too much so localised adjustments via selections might be needed. Overall, these are minor points though - I still think you've got a great shot here.

[Tim Foltz]

Kevin, nice interaction between the 2 birds and nice BG. Maybe try a vehicle comp and remove a few of the distractions, that way the interaction will stand out.

-Tim

[kevin Hice]

Thanks Tim, for the suggestions.I knew some of the branches were a distraction and do agree more focus is on the birds in a vertical composition.I just have a hard time with vertical versus horizontal compositions. As I do favor the horizontal pieces more.Thanks to Glenn ,Mike and Alex for the critiques much appreciated.

[Bob Miller]

Kevin...Nice work! I do like Tim's crop but with just a bit more room on the left

[Arthur Morris]

Small in the frame but I love it. I could not resist a bit of clean-up with the Patch Tool, the Clone Stamp, and Content Aware Fill. I love the image design.

with love, artie

ps: I was surprised that the edges of the subject and bush were so pixelated in the JPEG because the image looked so good. Not sure why. Be sure to save your JPEGs to < 395kb -- yours was much smaller than that. You can use Optimize to File Size from the drop-down menu on the top right of the Save for Web dialogue box.

[kevin Hice]

Thanks for the advice Artie very much appreciated.

[Arthur Morris]

YAW Kevin, I have not heard back from Arash yet :)

with love, artie