mountain bluebird

[Dave Slaughter]

This is a mountain bluebird, taken with a Canon Xti, 400 mm f5.6 lens
ISO 200
f5.6
1/125
The background was blurred a bit to reduce noise. No alteration was made in color saturation. I know the colors look unreal but so do the birds.
Some sharpening applied to his eyes and head.
Thanks for loooking.

[Alfred Forns]

HI Dave It does look unreal !!! I would back down the saturation in the blue channel just a bit !!

I like the pose and clean bg Great head angle One good point in this image is the light angle Take a look at the perch... lot of light on the right left side but not much to the right Same way there is a shadow ....same on the bird !!! You can try fill flash or obtaining a good sun angle !!!

[Katie Rupp]

Hi Dave,
Great head angle and nice bird...agree with Alfred about the blue.

[Gail Spitler]

Dave
Great image. I'm afraid the color does look unnatural to me as well.
Gail

[Julie Kenward]

I had a few of these birds in my backyard this spring so I can attest that this IS what they look like. It actually freaked me out a bit at first! You could back down on the blue a tad but since this is their color, I'd be tempted to leave it as is.

Great head angle, nice overall lighting and clean BG. Good work, Dave!

[Dave Slaughter]

Thanks for the comments. The first time I saw one of these birds I was so astounded by the color that I still remember the place and time even though it was decades ago - 1979, second week of June, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone (I dont keep lists and can't remember being so struck by any other bird. I was tempted to decrease the saturation due to previous comments about how unreal it looked but decided to keep it as is for a faithful recording of the bird. I am certainly going to have to learn about fill flash.

[Oscar Zangroniz]

Great image Dave. Excellent pose and head angle.