City visitor to wetlands...

[David Roach]

EOS R6 RF 100-500 @5000 F8 1/1000 ISO 500 HH, Manual EXP, slight crop for protrait composition

During my last visit to the local wetlands, was walking along about 30 minutes from sunset on a very clear evening, when this curious visitor landed on a dead snag branch nearby and shot me this look. I love the sheen and colors these common birds exhibit in direct light. This is very minimally processed. Added a couple points of vibrance in PS camera raw and only slightly sharpened the head/eye (not including the body, neck or beak) after resize for final presentation.

Thanks as always for valued help on previous posts.

[Kurt Bowman]

I agree with you about the sheen in the feathers being an eye catcher in this image! Good detail, love the BG. Nice work!

[Colin Driscoll]

Great light on the bird in front of the darker BG. Good fine detail particularly in that sheen. While eye contact could be better the head turn is still engaging.

[John Mack]

Solid portrait. The image quality looks quite good. I like that green background.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Looks very good to me, colours details and a really nice background.

[Dorian Anderson]

Good to see overlooked birds getting a bit of lens love! Pose is cool and I think the framing works well. Orange eye sucks us in, so that's good. Color and detail look great.

[Brian Sump]

David, beautiful colors for a plain subject.

The portrait works pretty well from here although I'd probably prefer a bit more 2x3 - this is a vertical pano, yeah?

Sweet pose, nice light.

Curious, how much crop?