Swallow Stretching

[Scott Frye]

Northern Rough-winged Swallow at Veterans Oasis Park (Chandler, Arizona)

1/3200 at f7.1 and ISO640
Bigmat at 500mm
Canon 40D

[Tony Whitehead]

Nice wing stretch showing off the flight feathers well, Scott. Good focus on the bird with a nice catchlight and head angle. Seems to be a fair bit of noise in the darker tones - did these need opening up in post processing - exposure info suggests was a bit under-exposed if extrapolating sunny f16 - some +EC would probably have been good. Seems to be a fairly prominent sharpening halo.

[Kobus Tollig]

Great pose and comp here. Well done on this

[Jim Fenton]

Like the pose and composition, but the OOF perch behind the subject really catches my eye and detracts (perhaps just to me).

What would happen if you cloned it out and left no continuation of the perch behind the subject?