Warbling vireo

[P-A. Fortin]

I had the chance and privilege this weekend to spend a full day with BPN's own Daniel Cadieux in Ottawa. A very fun, productive and rewarding day on which I learned alot on every aspect of bird photography. I also had the chance to spend a day with Kerry Perkins back in December. I'm telling you all: doing a workshop to benefit from the experience and knowledge of such experienced photographers is priceless and the impact on the quality of your images is unbelievable.

Those of you who know Daniel would probably expect me to post sparrow pictures. Yes, he did take me for some sparrow hunting and yes, I have amazing shots of 3 species I had never seen before. But that will be for another day.

Today's post features the last star of our day. A very cooperative Warbling vireo that we managed to get to land right on the perch that we had setup for him. Considering how hard these guys are to spot and see, this definitely was an amazing opportunity. Now I just hope Daniel won't post his images in case mine look silly in comparison

Back to my usual gear: Canon 60D, 100-400mm @ 400mm, f/6.3, ISO 500, 1/1250. Flash at -1 2/3 with better beamer. Handheld . Slight crop for composition, almost no processing and sharpening. A small notch on the branch cloned out.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi P-A., glad you had a chance to visit with Daniel. I'm sure you had a great day! What a nice obliging pose for you. Dreamy background. Exposure, color, and detail look good to me. I might want to crop just a bit from the upper left corner toward the center but that's just taste. Nice work, I'm looking forward to seeing some of those sparrows!

[Ronald Zigler]

I agree with Kerry on the crop. A great image set against a wonderful background (wish I could do that, birds are so uncooperative).

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hey P-A, it was a pleasure having you around! Nice looking vireo, glad it came down to pose for us. Good exposure, and beautiful BG ;-) Nice wok getting that notch out. I'd crop him just a little bigger in the frame. Hope you got some good singing poses too!

[P-A. Fortin]

The pleasure was all mine. Now beware, you'll hear from me again whenever I go back to Ottawa. And trust me, I will

Hope this answers your question about the singing poses . It's not my favorite head angle, but I like it because it looks like he's mad at you!



For the educational purpose of this forum: I used some of your tricks on this one to clone out an oof branch, 2 (?!) extra catchlights in the eye as well as lighting up the iris a bit (although it is barely noticeable).