Pied Wagtail

[Simon Wantling]

Taken the other day at my local reserve. It let me get quite close in with the 500mm. Bit of a boring perch but pleased to get this anyway. Any comments always appreciated.

7D, 500mm, f4, 1/400, ISO400, +1/3ev

[Karl Egressy]

I like the anled perch, background and the pose. I don't know the bird well, last time I saw one was 2000.
Based on that, I can't comment on colours.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Boy I bet you were pleased wit this one Simon - when was the last time you saw a pied magpie still long enough on a nice perch with a clear background? You did very well to capture this image they are amongst the twitchiest (is there such a word?) birds we have. Lovely exposure and colours, I wonder if the blacks could possibly benefit from being a tad denser - not sure, you were there I wasn't??

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Simon,

Looks great. I don't mind the "boring" perch at all. The clean bg against the black and white of the bird looks great. Nice detail, nice pose, and love that you got separation between the tail and the perch.

If I had one gripe (and a minor one at that) is that the left side of the perch is just a tad bit out of focus. Maybe a combination of ISO increase, and slower shutter speed would have allowed you to close down the aperture ... but I'm not sure if that was a possibility.

Miguel

[jack williamson]

A fine exposure, I like the old perch, the bg speaks for itself, fine detail on the bird.

[Simon Wantling]

Thanks for the feedback. Jonathan, yes I was pleased to get this one. Especially as I popper out during my lunch break, hand held the 500 and this was the first opportunity I was presented with. It seemed very happy to sit there and let me photograph it. I should mention that there was a branch in the top right corner which I cloned out using the new cloning tool in Lightroom 5 beta. Quite an impressive tool now.

thanks again.

[Jonathan Ashton]

You're welcome, BTW don't know why I referred to the wagtail as a magpie