Peacock in the wild

[Kerry Perkins]

Found this guy wandering around at Cachuma Lake, in Santa Barbara County. I believe it had escaped or wandered off from one of the large ranches in the area. Whatever the circumstances, it gave me a chance to get some nice shots, as it didn't seem to be concerned by my presence.

50D, EF400mm f/5.6L
Manual mode, f/5.6@1/1250 ISO 400 WB 5100K
AI Servo autofocus, hand-held no flash

[Steve Wasson]

It was nice of him to pose with the flower in the same focal plane! I like the head/body angle. Very nice!

[Joe Brown]

Kerry I was intrigued by this shot and gave it some thought before commenting. To me the really attractive and interesting part of the shot is the head neck and back of the bird but it represents a small portion of the image. As usual the image is well taken, sharp with good detail, nice light and colours.

Hope you don't mind but here is my spin on it. I cropped the image, applied some S/H and applied some sharpening.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Joe, I like the composition with the plant in the corner and I understand what you are saying, but... To me, the peacock without his train just isn't the whole story and this crop feels unbalanced to me. I know the train isn't the tail, but it serves many of the same purposes and I would never cut off a bird's tail in an image. Thanks for working with the image, I appreciate the interest!