Yellow-headed Blackbird

[Glenn Conlan]

Captured this special migrant to our area this spring on a cloudy morning. Shot from my carwindow on a beanbag. The bird was sitting on a Tamarisk plant that was in a pond with reeds in the background.

Nikon D4
600mm w 1.4tc
1/250 sec.
F5.6
ISO 1600
Exp. manual
Meter mode pattern
Minor cloning of a distracting lower branch below the tail

Happy new year to all! All comment appreciated

[Mike Milicia]

Nice pose with lovely perch and BG! The flat light really works well here for me.

Might try brightening it a tad and warming up the white balance a bit.

[Satish Ranadive]

What a lovely image you have, just love it.
Very nice pose,beautiful BG,perch and composition.

WISH YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, A VERY HAPPY, PEACEFUL AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR 2014.

Regards,
Satish.

[christopher galeski]

nice capture,like th BG and perch,nice pose.

[keith mitchell]

Glenn it looks great to me ,nice sharp detailed bird on a smashing clean BG.

Keith.

[Marina Scarr]

You have a great looking bird, perch and BG here. I think your image needs a little pop and your head needs some more sharpening. Here's my RP with a few tweeks. WDYT?

[Glenn Conlan]

You have a great looking bird, perch and BG here. I think your image needs a little pop and your head needs some more sharpening. Here's my RP with a few tweeks. WDYT?

Marina,

Thanks for the tweek, it looks fantastic. I need some definite help in my processing work. Besides sharpening what else did you do?

[Marina Scarr]

I tried a lot of different things. Think I finally ended up with a Shadow/Highlight pass at about a 10 on the shadows and a 1 on the brights. I think I lightened just the head a bit b/c the yellows were looking a little dark. Yes to sharpening of the head only too. When I look at them now they don't look that different. :(

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice pose, perch, BG! I'm usually not overly worried about dof in bird photography, but in this case I do wish you had more to get the back and tail in focus too...I do realize the low light was not advantageous to stopping down though.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the pose, perch and composition. Marina's repost is an improvement. Well done Glenn.

[David Salem]

Nice shot Glenn. I have the same frame and we were rewarded with that shot by sticking it out on a pretty crappy morning. Marinas repost looks better in the sense of sharpness. Well done

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Very nice one, I have always wanted to see, and photograph this species but it will take some time. Nice repost by Marina and good IQ. TFS.

[vishaljadhav]

Sweet plain BG compliments the bird well
I like the IQ and the HA is lovely too