A Thorny Situation

[Ian Cassell]

Curved Billed Thrasher

Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L HH

1/4000 sec f/5.6 ISO 800

Crop for composition and sharpening in CS6

[WillieHall]

These are cool birds, living in the thorns! I like how you got its habitat but wonder what a little tighter crop would yield?

[Doug West]

I'm with Willie...maybe cropping about half off the bottom...but I'd still keep
what you have here cause its awesome also, especially with that thingamajig
on the right cactus.

Doug

[David Kenny]

I like the strong eye contact. Good job isolating the bird from the cactus. A little more of a crop would be nice but it is also nice to see the bird in its environment.

[Diane Miller]

This is very cool! How can they DO that?? The bird looks like it's thinking, "What do I do now?"

[Ian Cassell]

Thanks folks. My initial approach was a tighter crop, but I felt the environment added too much to lose it. It's sort of a balance in my mind as to whether the environment or the bird was more important here.

[Diane Miller]

I think you hit a god balance -- the cactus is a huge part of the story. A case where you could have several interpretations.

[Tobie Schalkwyk]

Love it! No-one is going to bug it there, that's for sure!

[Arthur Morris]

Nice concept and I like the original framing. The BKGR is super-noisy and the images looks as if it could go a lot lighter; try pulling up the Curve....