California Quail

[Alan Murphy]

California Quail

Vancouver Island, BC

D3, 600, ISO 1250, f4, 1/250, -0.3EV, fill @ -2.0

This is a set-up that I did yesterday under dark conditions.

I added the foilage and the fall colored leaves in the BG.

[Keith Carver]

Great lighting for the quail with perfect catchlight, Alan. For my taste the foliage in the bottom right foreground is distracting - would prefer to see the perch unadorned. Nice BG!

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Great set-up with a stunning species. Well done Alan. Cannot fault it. You are a master at this stuff! :)

[Jim Crosswell]

A beautiful composition! The extra foilage makes the image more natural IMO.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Oh I'm liking the habitat included in this one. Terrific BG too. I'm wishing for separation between tail tip and leaf, but all around awesome image! :-)

[Sid Garige]

A fantastic image Alan. Great subject and wonderful fall colors.

[Harshad Barve]

What a good looking bird , Picture perfect for me
TFS

[Joel Eade]

Stunning image....looks technically perfect to me. There is a tiny little bright band on the bird's foot that I would remove. Awesome setup.

[Tony Whitehead]

Stunning, Alan. I love the cool grays of the quail against the warm BG and foliage. The autumnal rose leaves have great colour and texture that unites the BG and foreground as a perfect stage for the sharp bird. Only niggle is the leaf Dan commented on.

[Rosl Roessner]

What a beautiful image. Composition, colors, sharpnes, everything is perfect! What do you mean when you say you added the leaves? Did you add them after taking the picture? You tokk them from another image and made a kind of collage? Or did you add them to your setup before taking the picture?

[Chris van Rooyen]

Yup, an artwork, it all comes together, sharpness, background, colour. I would remove the leaf touching the tail?

[Mital Patel]

alan this is just awesome work man. superb expo and details came really well. just wish you could have cloned out that tip of the leaf touching tail and oof spot behind tail.

[Alan Murphy]

What a beautiful image. Composition, colors, sharpnes, everything is perfect! What do you mean when you say you added the leaves? Did you add them after taking the picture? You tokk them from another image and made a kind of collage? Or did you add them to your setup before taking the picture?

Hey Rosl,

I added the leaves to the scene (background and foreground) before I took any pictures. Nothing was added or taken away in Photoshop. Thanks for the nice words.

[Arthur Morris]

Ditto the positive comments above. Though a quail is not a songbird Alan's guide will teach you how to get them atop a rock or a nice stump. We should have them for shipping no later than 12 DEC. Hope that everyone had a happy Bird Day on Thursday.

[William Currie]

Great looking image What part of the island did you take the photo

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Alan...incredible bokeh.....those OOF leaves in the BG take this over the top IMO.

[Bryan Hix]

Beautiful bird. I like everything about it, but those 2 or 3 leaves near the tail could vanish if they wanted to. :)

[Alan Murphy]

Great looking image What part of the island did you take the photo

Hey William, sorry for the late reply. I'm overseas.
This image was taken just outside Victoria.