King of the moss hill.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I can't wait until the winter finches start showing up. In the meantime here is the always dependable Black-capped Chickadee. Lured onto this beautiful moss covered rock by strategic placement of seeds. You could call this a setup, but everything was found as is in the forest. One thing about late fall/winter is that with no leaves in the trees there is much more light to work with within the woods:).

Canon 40D + 100-400L @365mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/320s., f/6.3, ISO 640, -0.7 EC, natural light, handheld, slight crop for comp (~85 % FF)

[Harshad Barve]

Daniel
I am always surprised to see such a small cuties from you with 400mm,
Lovely species , nice details , compo and sharpness
TFS

ps , forget to mention , dark BG is killer one

[Keith Carver]

I like the spotlight illumination of the chickadee that you got in the forest, Daniel - just some breakthrough rays on the bird. Lovely COMP and BG with the lit-up perch a strong grounding element. Only nit is to wish for a little more light on the lower mandible and neck. Sharpness is very good and I notice you didn't zoom all the way out with your 100-400mm. Nice post!

[Kiran Poonacha]

cute one Daniel, like the HA, nice perch and crop. would just run NR on the BG. still works well, congrats..

[Jim Crosswell]

The pose, crop and compo work for me. Great image Daniel!

[Dave Leroy]

I also like the beam of light coming diagonally across the photo. The dof is also nice drawing in some of the sharp wing details. Very nice. Dave

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Daniel, I like the feel/mode of this image. The lighting combined with the dark background reminds me of an old Dutch painting. I like the pose on the moss. Well done. Thanks much for sharing.

[Steve Canuel]

Nice pose, perch, light, and BG (agree on a bit more NR). I really like the rich brown color of the BG.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Daniel
I am always surprised to see such a small cuties from you with 400mm,

Hey thanks guys!

Harshad, I'm glad you like it. I'm pretty happy with the results despite having "only" 400mm...with songbirds the trick is to entice them to come closer to me instead of me getting close to them... :)