Winter Blue Jay

[joel quenneville]

Taken from a blind in my backyard. The blue jays were very cooperative and I made many good photos. This image has the best combination of pleasing pose and BG. All comments welcome.

1/640s
f/8
ISO 1000
Sigma 120-300 + 2x TC @ 340mm
Nikon D300
Manual exposure
Fill flash

[LaurieBraman]

I like how the background colors set of the blue in the bird.

[John Chardine]

Hi Joel- Well done with this Blue Jay! The image has a nice bright look, it's sharp and the BG is very nice. You obviously had the flash set just right. A couple of weeks ago I posted an image with a fork in the branch close to the bottom of the image and was told quite rightly that this was a "design flaw". I wonder in this case if you can crop a little higher and eliminate the right hand, OOF branch altogether. Ask yourself, does it add anything to the image and if not .......!