South Carolina Snow and Siskins

The rare snow occured this morning with nice fluffy flakes all morning. The Goldfinches and Siskins were active at the yard set up. Although only a few Siskins they liked to perch on this Sumac berry head.

Chas.

amera Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark II
Camera serial number: 0000241625
Firmware: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows
Owner: Charles W. Mc Rae
Date/Time: 2009:01:20 12:15:40
Copyright: ©Chas.Mc Rae
Shutter speed: 1/200 sec
Aperture: 6.3
Exposure mode: Manual
Flash: On
Metering mode: Multi-segment
ISO: 800
Lens: 600mm
Focal length: 840mm
Image size: 800 x 608
Rotation: none
White balance: Auto
Color space: sRGB
Saturation: Normal
Contrast: Normal
Color profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1

Love the pose and you flash has done a good job. Rear curtain sync may be an option to get the bright speck of snow at the end of the blur. I would probably remove the snowflake just at the nape as it is almost touching. I think a square crop removing some of the stalk of the seedhead on the left would work too.

Love the soft flash-light here Chas. Can you remember your flash setup (exposure comp, ETTL or manual etc). The look-back pose is great and the unconventional crop works for me at least. I would bump up the sat in the red channel a little so that the sumac is accentuated a bit. The eye looks a little over-sharpened to me.

I like the lookback pose, details, perch, BG and snow. It could go a bit brighter for my taste and might work as vertical crop, too.

A lot of things you mentioned I consideredd, but didnt do. I accentuated the red in berries but seemed to overpower pic and backed off. Actually these winter berries are pretty dull. I acttually did overdo the eye a bit but didnt seem too bad until I was ready to post.
I actually worked to get the stalk in the pic since I liked the continuation of the curve, but see that didnt work for some. Lokked pretty bright on my Apple monitor but when posted looked darker than other postings. Will have to keep that in mind in future.
John-Flash -Canon Manual camera settings-flash on ETTL and flash minus 12\3's -I usually start with that esp in a neutral situation . Better beamer-set on 50mm.
Anyway I finally got to post a pic with Carolina snow.
Thanks for comments all.
Chas.