I really like the detail and texture that you were able to capture here. Very nice. The UL looks just a tad warm on my new monitor (iMac) but not hot and not blown out. I guess that's a long-winded way of saying it looks good to me. :)
Love the diagonal comp and all the curving lines converging on the central shaft. The subtle color tones give this a sepia look. On my monitor, some of the whites look blown and are a little distracting for me.
I had to look twice...the UL does not look blown out but I had to look twice. I finally realized that there is a definite "sheen" or "tone" that makes it appear to be blown out but it's not and I bet in print it's lovely.
That said, I do find that my eyes rest more on the bottom 2/3 of the image than the upper 1/3 - I think they are drawn the fact that there is just much more detail in the darker feathers at the bottom and so the eyes want to stay there and "explore."
Any idea what kind of bird feather this is Mike? It's really lovely.
I would prefer a more even lighting upon the feather, just cause the center is over powering and thought the composition is nice I think this would work nicer IMO, if you rotated this at 180 degrees having the the feather taper from large on the bottom to smaller on the top.