I shot this the other day here in Austin. Typical Scissor-tailed shots are often on fences or wires, but this female did a little preening on a limb with a decent background. Anyway, I liked the pose. Canon Mark III and EF 600mm F/4 L IS and 1.4X TC at 400 ISO.
Hi Greg. The only ones I've ever seen have been sitting on a wire fence. I like the pose and the BG. Sharpness is good too. It's the crop that I'm not crazy about. The bird is a little too crowded on the bottom, and a little too centered overall. Here's a repost with a slightly different crop (some canvas added at the bottom).
Yes, you are correct. I used that post because I made a 19X13 print for the landowner and should have gone ahead and changef the crop by adding canvas at the bottom. Point well taken. At the time of the shot I lost the wing tip off the bottom of the frame since the wing stretch happened so fast, but managed to get a couple of shots with the wing in the frame. Good points Doug...appreciated.
I agree with the extra canvas. Other than that, it seems the tip of the branch is OOF and is a little distracting. Great image, awsome pose. Kind of weird to see a photo of a scissortail on something other than barbed wire.
Yeah Dan, I thought about removing the limb in front of the bird, but I think the shot would look odd without it. The limb made a bend in the area not visible behind the bird's body, so part of the limb is not sharp, but so it goes. I was focused on the bird just trying to get a routine shot and the bird did the wing stretch so I felt lucky to get a few frames.
Great work on the repost, very cool pose with great light. It could use a bit more sharpening.
If the OOF tip bothers you, just take the very tip off, where it starts to turn down, you even have a marking there to guide you ;)
Thanks for everyone's comments. I reworked the image a little and thought I'd try removing the stick. Anyway, thought I put up the redone image...hope it is acceptable to do this. I like this crop.