Photographed in my backyard (Rancho Santa Fe) 4 days ago. This male California Quail was sitting on a fence post, standing guard over his flock which were munching my lawn.
1D Mark IV, 300mm+2X, ISO 400, f/10, 1/400"
I probably could have squeezed out a bit more DOF at the expense of shutter speed and gotten the tail more in focus.
While I would have liked the quail to be on a natural perch you have a great image here. I like the colors and sharpness of the bird along with the vegetation on the left. Good body and head angles.
Absolutely stunning bird and portrait. Agreed on the perch shortcomings, but otherwise pretty much perfect. Fantastic complementary background. Maybe try to set up a good natural perch for next time it visits?
If you see this species hanging out often you could definitely decorate the perch for future use if this is a favorite of his. Otherwise avery beautiful image!
Thanks to all of you who commented on this image. I agree wholeheartedly with the shortcomings of the black, wrought-iron perch. I have performed major surgery on the image and the fence post is now replaced with a somewhat manufactured natural perch borrowed from another image. In the process, I moved the bird over a bit toward the right side of the frame to get a better thirds composition and cleaned up some vegetation that was exiting the left edge of the image. Unfortunately, the new perch overlaps the lower right edge of the image. Not ideal, but hopefully an improvement. If any of you are still following this thread, have a look at the repost and let me know what you think.