Prothonotary Warbler

[James Phillips]

Taken This am out at Cheatam WMA

ISO 400
AV f 6/3
shutter 1/640
Lens Canon 600mm f/4 + 1.4 ext
Body 1dMKIII

[Randy Stout]

James:

A good looking bird. The background is very comlimenatry. A couple thoughts come to mind.

I think the perch/tree is too overpowering, both in mass and brightness. Might I suggest a crop from the right, I would remove at least half of the width of the perch.

The tail needs a bit more room on the bottom.

The eye looks like it could use just a big more sharpening.

Thanks for sharing!

Randy

[Tony Whitehead]

Nice behaviour captured. I agree with Randy's crop suggestion. There are quite a few dust bunnies showing in the BG so a sensor clean may be in order.

[Randy Stout]

James:

Here is a quick pass at the crop, slight curves adjustment, some minor highlight protection, since there were some blown pixels. Generally you can have a more centered bird when it is a vertical, as you have here.

I noticed the dust bunnies also while cropping, so sensor cleaning time!

Keep them coming.

Randy

[James Phillips]

Thanks for the comments and help. I went back and edited my photo and put the new version back up. I can't do anything about adding to the bottom side as I didn't realize I got that close to cutting the tail off until I uploaded the photos to the computer.
I did crop in from the right side adjusted levels some and sharpened a bit more. I also cleaned up the dust bunnies. I can't believe this sensor is that dirty.. I guess it's off to Canon for a cleaning and it needs the new mirror fix done as well so I'll just get it all done at once.

[Tony Whitehead]

Good job on the repost, James. For future reference it is customary to repost an image in a reply to the thread as Randy did, while leaving the original image so that preceding comments make sense to those coming to the thread later.

[Ilija Dukovski]

Nice image, captures interesting behavior.
I agree on the comment above. More room on the bottom would be nice.
Different crop to emphasize the bird and take attention away from the perch...

[Stu Bowie]

Great eye contact, and love the piece of wood in the beak. More space at the bottom would have great.

[James Phillips]

Good job on the repost, James. For future reference it is customary to repost an image in a reply to the thread as Randy did, while leaving the original image so that preceding comments make sense to those coming to the thread later.

Thanks Tony for the guidelines. I'm new here as you may tell and I'm still learning as I go on posting for the board.

I did put back the original in the first post and here is the edited version.