Chestnut Backed Chickadee

[Steve Smith]

Canon 70D, Tamron 150-600, spot metering, 1/1000 at F10.0 and 329 mm focal length, ISO 1000 . This chickadee is one of a pair but I don't know whether it's the male or the female - both sexes are similar. Comments appreciated.

Steve Smith

[Kirk Benson]

Color and detail look very nice Steve, wonderful exposure of the whites and blacks on the Chickadee, very well done.
I'm not sure if you were shooting up at the CBC, but the underside view gives me the impression of a steep shooting angle... my preference would be more of a level shooting angle.
My bigger question is why is the BG black? Even though the black BG eliminates anything to distract from your subject, it just isn't very appealing to me.

[gail bisson]

I like the dark BG here . It really focuses all the attention on the bird and gives a spotlight effect.
I would crop up from the bottom to above your signature and add more space top and right.
By cropping some off the bottom it would fool the eye into thinking the angle is not as steep and it would eliminate some of the "not so pretty "perch.
Gail

[Steve Smith]

Kirk and Gail,

Thank you for your comments. The bird was only a few inches above the lens - the bird is leaning with the perch angle and presenting its underside. The black background is a deep shadow - it's the entrance into a walk-in hedge where we keep our bins for garden clippings. I do like the black background Kirk - I think it suits the bird - but thankfully in photography we all have our cheerfully individual preferences.

Gail - I agree with your cropping suggestion. I use the rule of thirds when cropping - so as to get "power points' on the bird - but in this case the perch is too long and the angle is somewhat misleading. I will re-crop the image and add more space top and right to see what that looks like. I get my structural perches from driftwood. Ugly and scarred though the perch may be (it lost more bark and cracked when I told it what you said) - the birds love it.

Steve Smith