Cedar Waxwing in Serviceberries

[John Flynn]

A friend of mine has some Serviceberries growing outside his house and for a few weeks it is a bonanza of feasting birds. We were sitting outside his porch in the evening (as evidenced by the ISO, SS and aperture) while taking pictures. It was fun trying to get them with the Serviceberries caught in their bill. This is one of my successes. We did not trim any of the branches or do a setup. Slight crop for composition. Distracting elements removed from the background. Processed in DPP and Photoshop. ISO 2500, f8, 1/500s, 840mm. Comments and critiques greatly appreciated!

[gail bisson]

This is very nice.
Love the perfect head turn and the berry in the mouth.
The grey BG really sets this bird off very well.
My only suggestion to improve this image would be to change the composition. I would take a lot off the top and right and a bit off the left.
There is too much empty space for my taste.
You have captured the texture of the feathers perfectly,
Gail

[dankearl]

I think the comp is fine, just crop it in a tad.
Excellent IQ....

[arash_hazeghi]

nice pose and details, I also find too much empty space in the frame which can be fixed with cropping. I also wish his tail wasn't blocked by the leaves. the food item is a nice touch

TFS

[John Flynn]

I decided to go with a much more extreme crop. I think the IQ will hold up to the crop but I found if I went less extreme I didn't like where he was in the frame or there was too much space in front of him. Let me know what you think! I have one with the tail poking through the other side of the leaf but I think its better to cut it off completely rather than to fragment it. Especially with the bright yellow of a waxwing's tail.

[Bill Dix]

Great pose with the berry in the beak and a nice head turn. Feathers on this species are so smooth that it's tough to show the texture; you have done it very nicely here. I like the comp of the repost, eliminating a lot of the grey, especially since it is so monolithic. Wish I could see the yellow tip of the tail. And something is bugging me about the color, but maybe it's just me. Do the greens seem just a bit too blue? That is, is there possibly just a bit too much magenta or red in the color balance? That's a minor nit of a very fine image.

[Shawn Zierman]

Serviceberries make me hungry! And boy o boy that waxie is flaunting that juicy berry. You achieved lovely colors and textures on the waxwing's plumage. Beautiful head angle for this type of image. Compositionally, the repost is much better, more concise, and creates a stronger pyramid form when compared with the OP. A lovely bird image good sir.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The repost does it! Perfect berry-in-bill pose, and I love the "wax" on the wing matching the colour of the berries...neat touches of red among those greens. The details held well for the crop and high ISO...which camera body do you use?

[John Flynn]

Thanks everyone for the helpful comments! I used a 1dx for this shot but I typically will use my backup 7dii for focal length limited shots but the light was so low and I knew I wanted to stop down a bit so I went for my 1dx. I looked at the crop at full resolution and there was markedly more details than the bpn post too.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Your repost is much, much stronger in comp.
Nicely caught with the berry. Soft light is good.
TFS