I wanted to leave the tips of the spruce twigs in, so I didn't crop any tighter. I know the head turn should be a bit more towards me. I had just 2 shots within about 1/2 second before he flew. The camera was on auto-ISO, and I didn't have time to change it. Noise Ninja applied in pp.
D300, 80-400VR at 400mm., hand-held, 1/500, f/9.0, ISO 1600, EV-0.7.
Love the framing of the lower sprigs and the good self critique. The head angle is an image wrecker... Sometimes you can spish them to get the head turn that you need, at other times, they fly away. I would rather try for the perfect image and wind up with nothing....
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I agree with you on the crop, this is very pleasing and is more of what you could call an environmental portrait. As Artie mentioned, the head angle is not very pleasing here. Strong compositions usually have very good eye contact between the viewer and the bird. Otherwise: exposure, lighting, sharpness and colors are good.
I like the composition a lot, you did it right IMO making no croping. Too bad that the head turn is not the best. A good sense of selfcritic is one of the best tools that we have to improve our work and you did a god job with the self critic. :-)