Going through some old files on a rainy day. This is from the Peruvian Amazon in 2015. Bird (a new one for me and the only time we saw him) was on a snag in the middle of a small black-water tributary, shot from a slow-moving skiff.
It looks like the point of focus was on the near shoulder, as that area is sharper than the head. The perch is somewhat distracting. Might be able to reduce its impact by a vertical crop,
Thanks Randy. You're probably right about the focus. Pretty tough to keep the focus point on the eye of a small bird from a moving boat at 700mm. The cheek looks pretty sharp to me but the focus definitely falls off at the top of the head. I personally like the perch, and though it detracts from the bird, for me it adds to the jungle setting. But I'll go back and look at a vertical.
re: the perch. I like to tell stories with my images, so if the perch is important to the story, I get it. The viewer often doesn't know the significance of certain objects within the frame, and tends to go just on what they see, as they don't know the whole story !
Thank you all for looking and commenting. I've lifted the shadows a bit -- good suggestion. I'm sorry most of you didn't like the perch. It's far from beautiful, but having been there, it felt evocative of that Amazonian, riverine feeling in those small blackwater creeks. To each his own.
Yellow-browed Sparrow
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