Male Stonechat

This little guy was taunting me to take some photos of him. Following me along from branch to branch so I decided to take a few with good sunlight

I was trying to get as much detail in the blacks as possible but that white patch in the neck was constantly blown so I dropped the ISO and played with the cameras good dynamic range

D800e
300f4 + 1.7x TC
f6.7
1/1600
ISO 500
Hand Held

Removed a thorn and yellow flower intersecting the tail and bottom. Cleaned bill and then cropped for composition and sharpened after resizing

Thanks for your comments

Shane, sweet little bird. The composition feels unbalanced with everything on the right side and so much empty space on the left. I would rework this. That white patch still looks quite hot to me. With my Canon gear, I always have to expose for the whites and then deal with the darks in post processing.

Hi Shane

Very difficult bird to expose correctly- very dark blacks, mid tones and bright whites, depending on the ambient light.

I have seen that I can bring back details in blacks, but blown whites I can not fix:bugeyed:.

Bird crisp.

Nice details in mid tones.

Cheers

Andre

Indeed not easy to get this one right. You have to expose for the highlights in my opinion, but the trick is to have a nice and soft light to get the dark details out as well. That's being said you did a good job here I think. I am sure on the large size you can get all the details out of both dark and bright parts. I like the pose and the sweet clean BG as well.

I like the pose and colors, good BG. I agree the light was harsh here. with the empty space I'd also opt for a vert.

TFS

Thanks guys

Will stick to shooting these males when its cloudy and hopefully i can get an even better one

The light was not ideal, but definitely well handled. I'd either go with a vertical crop as Arash mentioned, or think about taking from the top and left. It looks like you definitely have the IQ