Steller's Jay

[Leroy Laverman]

I've been going through some of my old photos from last year with an eye towards some of the suggestions I've seen here. Reprocessed this one in lightroom with sharpening/resizing in PS. I was tempted to clone out some of the pine needles near the tail but opted to leave it as is. I've only really started looking for this in detail recently but I hope the HAP will be happy :)


Technical Bits:
Nikon D80
Nikon 80-200mm 1:2.8 (at 125mm here)
ISO 400 f/4.0 1/125sec
matrix metering (-1/3 eV compensation) with on camera flash

[Cindy Cone]

Beatufiul portrait of this jay in its habitat with wonderful detail and color. I don't mind the pine needles at all. The only thing that's a little bit distracting to me are the lighter spots in the needles behind the bird. Perhaps those could be burned a little?

[David Hemmings]

Hi Leroy, very pretty image, great color and details. The pine needles are cool, just a bit overpowering imo. Agree with the highlights comment.
Dave

[Bruce Gove]

great image Leroy! love the compo and the wondeful colors - WOW ! needles don't bother me 2 much, but they'd easy to tend to in ps

Cheers,

Bruce Gove

[Dave Phillips]

beautiful bird....HAP should be very happy.
If those bg needles would have been way oof.....wow!!

wonder what f/2.8 would have done

[Daniel Cadieux]

A beautiful jay, I've always enjoyed viewing photos of this species and yours is no exception! Some of the reflections on the needles are distracting, particularly the ones in front of the breast. Also, if you look carefully you will find a faint hint of "steel eye" in the pupil caused by your flash.