Willy Wagtail

[Mark Young]

A common enough bird here.

Photographed in harsh light. I tried to recover some of the hot whites, but not enough.

Canon 7D 300f4+1.4tc, ISO320, f8, 1/800, +0.7, manual mode

[Cheryl Flory]

I love the details in the blacks! and the inquisitive position.
Can you bring down the whites?

[James Shadle]

Mark,
You made the best of a tough situation.
What killed the bird's chest was the light being reflected back from the perch.

Break out a paint brush - a brown feeder / bath would work great!

Dead sharp by the way. I might add a little canvas on the left side.

Thanks.

[Julie Kenward]

James nailed my thoughts on this one. I like the pose and the comp but the whites are killing the image here. Do you know what you'd do different next time?

[Mark Young]

Thanks for viewing and commenting everyone.

Cheryl, I've toned down the whites as much as I think I can. As James has mentioned the whites reflecting off the boat has caused them to be very very bright. I'm not sure where to go to improve this without affecting the details in the blacks on this.

James, I actually started with a crop that had more canvas on the left, but did it this way as I thought it wasn't adhering to the 2/3's rule.

Julie, for next time I'ld take this image in manual mode again, but not push the histogram so far to the right. Apart from avoiding bright perches like James has suggested, I'm not sure what else I can do. Any help on that would be great.

[Fred Canter]

A black and white bird, it sure doesn't get any tougher than this. Then throw in the perch and it's even harder, but you handled it as well as possible. I wonder if you had spot metered on the bright white if you would have lost the blacks. Sadly or luckily, depending on perspective, I don't have these two colors in a bird here to try. It has to be tough though. Beautiful bird.