"This is MY perch, and those are MY seeds...I dare you to get closer!!":)
Photographed a couple of weeks ago at an impromptu set-up in a forested area where these guys and the nuthatches are tame enough too feed out of your hand.
Canon 40D + 100-400L @400mm, aperture priority, evaluative metering, 1/500s., f/6.3, ISO 800, no EC. Slightly cropped left, right, and bottom.
Superb colours and background. The light looks very even for the forest. I guess this is down to the great choice of location. I too would like to see the head lifted a little higher. I think the stronger head on eye contact would emphasise the confrontational storyline.
Colors, exposure, sharpness, all really nice.
Good choice on cropping to downplay the larger perch.
I do agree that as a stand alone image, a bit of a chin up posture would help. Do you have other frames of this setup with the head up?
Thanks to you for downplaying the big perch, and thanks to Randy for pointing out your work. I see the wisdom in your crop. Your background is stunning, Daniel; you seem to have a knack for finding perfect natural BGs. Your anthropomorphic verbal framing ("This is MY perch, . . . ") is not powerful enough to satisfy my hankering for a more typical shot of the chickadee. Got one?
Thanks all! The reason I liked this one was that it looked like it wanted to butt heads...kinda like an angry ram lowering its head in cahallenge:p...I can just imagine it scraping the perch with a talon and blowing smoke through its nose!!
I do see your points though about having the head higher...