evening blue

spotted this stellar's jay on a neighbor's fence just at sunset one evening. i seldom see these fellows out in the open - they prefer to lurk deep in the branches of trees where it's hard to get a clear shot - so i grabbed my camera and snapped a couple of shots before he flew off. 30D with Sigma EX 80-400 @ 400mm, handheld, 1/320 @ f5.6...

Hello, good work getting the camera ready quickly. Always fun to capture something which has been elusive.

c/c - I realize this was probably under rush, but if it were my shot I would be thinking that I'd like to get the nail and the shadow in the lower right corner out of the shot if possible. Also if there was a possibility of fill flash I might have tried it to fill in the darks on the head / around the eye, as it strikes me as being a touch dark as processed.

There are also a couple of spots on the background - one at chest level near the right edge and one near the top edge straight up from the end of the beak I would clone out.

thanks, Steve... the nail and the bit of fence in the lower right corner... can't do much with those but clone them out, which i probably would do if i were to print this image. unfortunately, though, he was too far away for a fill flash. now that you mention the spots, i see them... no idea what they are, but they'd be easy to get rid of.

Really nice image - I like how the light lights up the front of the bird and makes the shape of the bird. It is also very sharp and crisp.

the nail

I dunno... I kinda like the nail. It's a repeated pattern w/ the tail of the bird. Of course I would probably just make pictures of the nail...

Well I love the picture of the bird and the light playing if the neck as Johann points out.

The nail is a balancing feature if it is parallel or at right angles to the tail.

I'd try seeing how it would look by extracting the nail and shadow and rotatong it to see what it did to the image. I'd also enhance the texture of the paint and wood on the rail.

However, no need, it's impressive as it is!

Did you sharpen it?

Asher