Red Winged Blackbird

[Rodney Flowers]

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/%7Eflowersr/images/Birds/20080601Red_Winged_Blackbird-IMG_3576-Web.jpg

I've been going through a lot of my images that I first took starting in April 2008 when I started taking photography more seriously. Needless to say I have deleted a lot of my images that just don't match up to my expectations anymore. I liked this one so I decided I would post it to find out what everyone else thinks. Thanks for any input.

Canon Rebel XTI and Canon 100-400L IS lens taken at 400mm
ISO 400 f/8 1/500sec

[denise ippolito]

Rodney, Very nice pose w/ open mouth and the red-wing showing. I like the queen anne's lace but might tone down the green just a bit. Nice details and composition.

[Randy Stout]

Rodney"

Agree with Denise, nice pose with epaulets up. I also find it too green, and would recommend backing down the green slider a bit. The light was pretty harsh, but I think you did pretty well balancing the exposure between the blacks and the red/whites, which are very easy to burn on these guys.

Randy

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Ditto the above comments regarding the saturation. Very striking pose and the open beak adds a lot to this capture. Many thanks for sharing Rodney.

[Juan Aragonés]

The exposure seems to be very good and the blacks are full of details. Superb eye contact and love the open beak :-)

[Michael Zajac]

Rodney, Nice calling pose and very nice details.You did great taming the light and I might back down on the green as suggested.

[Rodney Flowers]

Thanks for all of the comments. The white balance in the camera had originally be set to cloudy. I adjusted the white balance to daylight and reprocessed the image. I also added a color balance adjustment layer and moved the slider for magenta and green to -2. I am still learning post processing skills so let me know if this looks better.
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/%7Eflowersr/images/Birds/20080601Red_Winged_Blackbird-IMG_3576-Web-2.jpg