Makes me wonder. This was one of my first BPN posts, January 20th. 1958, and also one of first featured in Artie's newsletters at that time as promising.
IMHO, I don't think I have improved considering the time and money spent on camera equipment and software.
Very nice photo Gus. A tiny bit of a head turn and you would be in the money.
As for your comment about improving over the past few years, perhaps it is consistency.
Maybe before every one in a while you would get a real nice one like the one above. Now maybe you get those real keepers more often.
Certainly looking at the recent bunch of hummer shots there are a lot of real good ones.
Gus, I can't believe you don't think you've improved since this? Really? Although this is a nice image, it's not nearly as good as what you've been posting lately IMO. When I look at this I see a good pose and HA and a nice comp but I also see an unevenly exposed BG, noise in the BG, and a little too much contrast in the overall image. If you had shown me this image I'd be hard pressed to say this was a Gus Halgren image...