Another Steller's Jay

[Ian Cassell]

Canon 7D
Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L
1/640sec f/7.1 ISO 1250 Av +5/3 HH

Levels, sharpening, clean-up of debris in CS5
NR on BG in Noiseware Pro

[Bill Jobes]

Excellent image, Ian -- I love the blues and the tuft feathers.

I wonder if it's possible to tame the snow brights a bit, and perhaps (this is, granted, a matter of taste) enhance the 'pop' of the bird and background, maybe by using selective contrast/brightness along with selective levels and curves adjustments.

The BG greens are a nice addition to the blues of the Jay.

[Julie Kenward]

The first thing I noticed was that you had a good pose, a good angle a pleasing BG and good detail throughout the bird. Then, almost immediately, no next thought was "Why does this feel so unbalanced?" The brightness of the snow below the bird and the dark area in the top 1/3 of the frame leaves me feeling like the image is going to collapse upon itself.

Your snow is certainly overbright while your bird, in areas, is definitely a bit underexposed. This is definitely a tricky exposure because you can see how the white snow is acting as a reflector on the bottom half of the bird but not on the top where the crest creates a shadow. Instinctively I wonder if moving to the right a bit would have taken that crest out of creating a shadow and you still left you with a good head angle. If nothing else, I think pulling the exposure down on the snow and letting some fill flash even out the exposure might have been a little better choice...but let's here what the others think.

Overall, I think the image is very pretty - just not as technically strong as many of your other images.

[John Chardine]

This one's a lot less noisy than the last one Ian. Well done. Agree with the comments above. Is this a crop? if so I would look at a looser crop to give the bird some breathing space. I would also selectively darken the bird a little along the lines Jules is talking about.

[Ian Cassell]

Thank you, folks. This adventure teaches me that I can't forget to bring my flash along. No, John, it's not much of a crop.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Ian, aside from technical issues discussed above, my initial reaction to this one was "that is really pretty." I love the subdued colors of both the jay and the bg and the green is a very nice compliment to the blue of the bird. Your rig is exactly what I shoot with, and for this one you could have used the pop-up flash on the camera for a little fill light. If it were mine I would probably paint out some of the highlights in the eye, there are a lot of them.