Tufted Titmouse

[Joel Eade]

1DMKIII
300mm 2.8L + 1.4 TCII
580 EXII ETTL -2 stops + Better Beamer
Tripod
Manual mode
iso 1000
f/6.3
1/160

[Randy Stout]

Joel:

Excellent use of flash to brighten up your bird. I would def. consider removing the flash catchlight since you have such a nice natural one.
Sharp, well exposed, good DOF.

I would consider toning down the yellow leaves above the head, and a subtle vignette of the corners to keep our attention focused towards the subject.

Quite charming, I think tufted titmice have lots of character.

Cheers

Randy

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the pose, HA and exposure. I would like to see a repost using Randys suggestions. Well done Joel!

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Joel, really nice. Good job in positioning yourself to get nice blur behind the bird. liked the habitat and comp. Very well done.

[Joel Eade]

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, here's a repost......

[Randy Stout]

Joel:

The left upper corner, although toned down, doesn't look natural now, esp. the yellow leaves.

The right upper, right lower look good, left lower OK, left upper needs a bit different approach to toning it down. It looks like perhaps you painted over it, and to my eye that didn't work as well as you might like.

Will see what others have to say.

I might try to see if I could do a selection on the yellow leaf and then run a multiply layer to gently tone it down.

Cheers

Randy

[Stan Cunningham]

Maybe I'm the loner but I really liked the colored leaf in the upper left in the first post and would leave it alone. Color matches that of his breast just under the wing. The standard flash reflection in the eye could be toned down but I think the contrast makes the shot.
I might try and crop some of the oof on the very bottom, but nice pic.