Scott's Oriole

It's been a while since I've been here. This Scott's Oriole was photographed last week in Anza Borrego State Park.

D700
500mm VR
1.7X TC
1/800@ f/8
iso 640

Love the pose and the bg would run another round of sharpening to the bird as it looks like the perch is sharper than the bird. Maybe tone down the perch also
overall very pleasing

Really nice Charlie. I might do a highlight multiply and then lower opacity just to tame the branch and background some.

Good advise by Paul and John, very nice bird. I'd crop some off the top, the bird looks sort of too centered now.
Keep the coming!

All good advice. I like the pose, perch, and BG...but I could do without the extra vegetation in LLC. Some of the yellows seem a little hot in the shoulder area, perhaps desaturating them there would help with that. Don't wait so long for your next post! :-)

Beautiful shot Charlie of a great species Charlie! If you wanted to address most of the issues above regarding brightness of the perch or yellows I think you could do it simply by going back to the RAW file and decreasing the exposure by about -0.3 or so. My guess is that you would still have excellent details in the blacks of the oriole. I know that you were working on this species, so congrats on such a fine capture of it.

I like the dynamic pose, perhaps the bird needs a tad more sharpening .