House Wren

[Herb Houghton]

This one was nesting in a tiny birdhouse at a relative's front yard. Canon rebel XTi, 500 f4, 580 EX flash, iso 200, f5.6, 1/100, +.33 e.c. from a tripod.

[Mark Dumbleton]

Lovely BG colours, and good detail on the bird. Good use of flash here. Well done

[Randy Stout]

Herb:

A sharp little fellow, flash helped bring him up compared with the bright background.
I might suggest toning down the background and rock a bit to emphasize the bird.

The HA is very nice, its unfortunate that his rear is so completely blocked by the rock.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers

Randy

[Ramon M. Casares]

I agree with Randy here and I would ad that it feels a bit oversharpnend to my taste.
Great detail, nice light, pose, and BG colors. Congratulations!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the eye contact and angle and agree regarding sharpening. I would also give it more room and the image could go a bit darker for my taste.

[Arthur Morris]

Loverly SH, BKGR, and HA. Too, too tight in the frame. Randy, I think that your rock might be a branch....

[Herb Houghton]

Thanks for the comments everyone. I left image at full frame instead of cropping, reduced the sharpening and darkened, repaired halos in the BG a bit. The tip of it's tail is just visible below the branch.

[Doug Herr]

I'm personally not a fan of the flashed look, I'd rather see a little less flash for a little more tonal variation between the upper and lower parts of the bird as though the primary light were from the sky.

[Kobus Tollig]

Branch it is hehehe. Well done on this. You did great agree on a bit tight. Like randy's version I would just add the space

[Chris Kotze]

Great close up and super colours. Your new comp looks fine

[Herb Houghton]

I'm personally not a fan of the flashed look, I'd rather see a little less flash for a little more tonal variation between the upper and lower parts of the bird as though the primary light were from the sky.

As the bird was under the canopy of the tree, light from the sky was not an option, just soft filtered light. Without the flash, the shot would have weak light and therefore wouldn't work at all. Thanks for commenting.

[Arthur Morris]

As the bird was under the canopy of the tree, light from the sky was not an option, just soft filtered light. Without the flash, the shot would have weak light and therefore wouldn't work at all. Thanks for commenting.

Hi Herb, First off, I like the full frame image much better than the tightly cropped one.

Your comment above might have been true with film, but is in no way correct with digital. While flash can at times improve an image slightly, properly optimized images taken in low light can be superb and often look as good or better than flashed images from the same sequence. But only after being properly optimized.