Black Vulture headshot

I captured this image a few weeks back at Ahninga Trail in the Everglades. Just as with the Cormorant headshot I posted a while back, I was able to move around and get shots from several different angles to vary the backgrounds. This one (with the blue water background) ended up being my favorite of the various attempts. Image was made in the soft early morning light at 8:21am, (natural light - without flash).

Details: Canon 1D Mark II N, Canon, Canon 100-400L IS lens, Aperture priority 1/1000 at f8, -2/3 EV, partial metering, iso 400, hand-held. Cropped a little from the top and right to improve composition.

Note: Right after I posted this image, I realized I should have worked the bird's eye a little bit because it's too dark and shows little detail. I did that and posted an edited version here: http://www.pbase.com/image/95510051

Nothing like natural light to show off a subject. Portraits can be hard to get right and some subjects are more difficult than others. Personally the Black Vulture is a nice subject to work with. I have one and wish I had others, like this one. I like your use of the natural light, the pose and the clean bird. Excellent on those points.

I like the detaill and texture in the birds face/neck.

Great work, Tim! This is very nice portrait of a beautiful(??) bird :) I like the eye work that you did in the second image, although it looks a bit unnatural at first glance... To help the composition more, I'd crop a little more off the right side. Also, depending on the image you were trying to create, fill flash would have been a good option to really make this pop!

Very nice detail throughout Tim. Possible improvements mentioned. As an ad on to Blakes comment on fill......If you had used even the pop up flash......the gold around the head would have really jumped out........still like it as is.
You made a not so pretty bird look very attractive

Love the detail in this image! Thanks for posting.