Crested Pigeon

The Crested Pigeon at left is trying out his bowing, fanning, whooping display. What should I do about the bird at right - this crop keeps the love interest, or maybe I should just crop to the displaying bird. What do you think?

Canon 40D EF500 f/4 + 1.4 tc, 580ex flash + bb, blubb beanbag on a car window, ISO400, 1/200, f/8, fec -1 2/3. Vertical crop from horizontal, there is canvas to left and right, but not above or below.

Simon
I think you could leave it......to explain the position better or crop vertically. It would be a tight crop but I think it would work. What a beautiful pigeon. Nice exposure and detail. Well done.

Difficult decision here Simon, I tend to agree with Lana, I would leave the other bird, I think you have selected the best option. More room at the bottom would be nice. I think more to the right would add to much OOF bird and be distracting. Like the action, quite a few of these from my efforts to date have landed in the trash bin, good to see someone witrh a good result.

A beautiful pigeon, Simon, and nice, clean image of him. I agree that you could leave the other bird. I think there could be just a bit more room top, bottom, and left - seems a bit tight to me.

Definitely leave bird #2. Would include a bit more on the right if you have it. Wonderful display but unmentioned problems as follows:

1-The sharp focus is just this side of the tail; it looks as if you were using the central sensor and focused way, way beyond the eye.
2-Looks like a bit of spotlight lighting but the spotlight is on the shoulder/side of the breast rather than on the head, thus the side of the breast looks very bright. A reverse S-Curves ADJ could help.
3-As a result of #1 the eye, face, and head could be selectively sharpened.

I hate to disagree with the others, but a quick screen crop to *just* remove the bird on the right sure looks good!

-Noel