Horned Lark On Ice.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice to see these guys last week as they are one of the earliest Spring migrants to show up here. A sure sign of the ending of winter...although they are calling for a significant snowstorm early next week!!

Canon 7D 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1000s., f/8, ISO 400, natural light, audio, car as blind. Small bits of dark debris spot-healed out of ice perch, enhanced catchlight via didge tool.

[Nick Palmieri]

Really nice high key presentation. Love being able to see his "horns" and I love his subtle colors against the light BG. Beautiful.

[Dennis Zaebst]

Very nice high-key image. I like the fact that there is just enough detail in the snow at the bird's feet such that it doesn't look like he is floating on nothing at all. Very well done Daniel.

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Beautiful composition and exposure. The IQ is stunning and the even lighting has rendered nice details without any shadows. Love the ice and those horns showing. Very nice!

[Don Nelson]

Love the ice and position of the bird. This is really over the top.
Were you in a blind? these birds are pretty skittish out in the Pacific Northwest - they cannot easily be approached.

[Frank Schauf]

Beautiful portrait, great pose and colors.

[Shawn Zierman]

Sweet! Always great to be able to get this kind of an angle from a car.
The bird shows nicely, and perfect bit of seperation of the body from the iced perch.

[vishaljadhav]

Impressive exposure and a classical head turn, the ice being so nicely exposed makes the bird seperate from the ice.
Love it the colors look good

[christopher galeski]

loverly image,love the light the snow as created,and the snow perch,good pose and nice details.

[Andrew Merwin]

A very cool image. Great techs & composition. The unexpected environment for a horned lark makes this a compelling & unusual image. TFS.

[David Salem]

Very nice shot of this guy. Great detail and excellent exposure. I love how the snow/ice perch is defined from the BG. I have many great opportunities to shoot these birds and am able to get very close in my car. I thought something was wrong with my camera/lens until I figured out that in my area the heat coming off the ground, even at 8am, was causing distortion and making all my images look soft. Until it happened multiple times with Horned Larks on the ground did I figure it out. Nice display of the horns too.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys!

Don, I used my car as a blind.
David, yep, learned that lesson a while back too. Now I approach those country roads with the heat off and windows down as the heat escaping from the indise of the car does the same thing too...

[arash_hazeghi]

that perch is lovely Dan, too bad the great greys did not like this kind of perch!

TFS

[Karl Egressy]

Striking image, daniel. Love the high key presentation.

[Jim Crosswell]

Great image Daniel! I like the pose, perch, IQ, horns, exposure and composition.