Ring Neck with blunt tail

[Aaron Lee]

I went out cruising for Horned Larks and Snow Buntings this afternoon on the backroads close to home. It was around 8 below zero,so walking around freezing my giblets off was not gonna happen.
This was the only subject that would cooperate to any extent. His tail feathers seem to be ripped up a little. I've seen a fox grab them from behind and just get a mouth full of feathers,so maybe that's what happened to this dude.
The crop was a toss up,I guess I wanted to include a small view of where he was heading. This is a very heavy crop as I was quite a distance away [60 yds] Shot from vehicle.

EOS 7D,100-400L @ 400mm,F5.6,1/1250,ISO 200,Evalutive metering + 1 1/3 EC. Converted in ACR 5.6,Crop,cloned out corn stubble + USM in Elements.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the wide crop, head angle and eye contact. I would try to remove the green cast of the snow and maybe crop some off the top.

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Aaron, I like the alert pose of the bird. The raised foot and head angle are pleasing to me. I agree with Axel that there appears to be a color cast to the image. Attached is my attempt at removing the adjusting the color. Thanks for sharing.

After posting I noticed that I lost some of the color of the bird. I hadn't noticed that in photoshop. If it were mine I would adjusted the color of the snow to something close to my reposting and leave the bird as seen in your original post.

[Aaron Lee]

I appreciate the help. I had trouble editing the snow to include the shadowing as I saw it,while trying to keep it from looking too blue. I do like the crop more though. Thanks!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Aaron, in your repost the color cast shifted from green to yellow. Is your monitor calibrated? The color of the snow in Phil's repost looks pretty good to me.

[david cramer]

Nice catch and interesting pose. Cropping some from the top does bring my eye more to the bird, but I find it ok as you've posted it as well.

[Steve Canuel]

I like the comp, the layers of snow, and the way the darker brush in the URC balances out the bird. Just need to correct the color of the snow.

[Arthur Morris]

Alan, Check out Phil's repost: he nailed the color balance. Ask him how he did it.

[Aaron Lee]

I must need to calibrate. In Phil's repost the snow looks very blue to me and the rest [weeds] has a blue cast.

[Randy Stout]

Aaron:

Another take on the color cast. I used Robert O'tooles Average blur color balance tech, with the opacity at 85% on the slider. It got rid of the green, but left the birds colors. Lots of different ways to do this.

This tech. took about 25 seconds.
This tech. is covered in detail on his APATS II CD.

Cheers

Randy