Barwinged beauty

[saleeltambe]

As the name says - "Bar Winged Flycatcher Shrike" - and for last few years, I always struggled to correctly capture the bars on its wings, the exposures are always tricky due to the whites and blacks - it is a difficult bird to photograph in the forests due to its restless nature, cluttered habitat and it hardlygives any opportunity to compose it properly in the frame.

During my recent visit to India - I had some luck with this charachteristic species of Western ghats. This image is from Cotigao -Goa.

Canon 40D, 500mm+1.4x, ISO400, 1/800 f5.6, Gitzo and Wimberly II head

[Daniel Cadieux]

Congratulations on getting an image you envisioned with this species! Good head turn, and I like the perch. With the two complete leaves at left counter-balancing the merged ones at right I am OK with the centered placement of the subject. I see some colour noise on the tail and primaries...were the blacks there in need of lightening during PP? I also see some compression artefacts around some of the perimeter of the bird - probably due to resizing.

[saleeltambe]

Thanks for your inputs Daniel.
Regarding the compression - you may be quite right - I guess its the resizing for posting here. Because the unposted image does not seem to have them so obvious. And the blacks on the tail- most probably its the noise reduction after effects showing up in the resize as well.