Guess Where Is the Peanut

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

Bluejay.jpg
Bluejay.jpg2000Ă—1433 723 KB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Our bird feeders were very popular after 2 inches of wet snow provided a white and mud brown Christmas. I laded up the platform feeder with shelled peanuts and waited for customers to drop in. This blue jay had just landed and spied a delectable morsel on the feeder. I did not know that I captured this pose until examining the series in LightRoom. This has to be one of my favorites from 2024 because the image has an interesting pose, lots of sharpness and detail. Additionally, thin clouds and -2ev fill flash brought out those blues. The BG is patches of snow and spruce tree branches.

Specific Feedback

I did not crop this too much in order to leave plenty of space around for the jay. How do you like the crop? Although blue jays are dirt common, I find them to be a challenging subject. They move constantly and only remain out in the open for seconds at a time. How do you like the pose? I used one of the Band-Aid tools in Photoshop to remove two twigs in the upper RH corner. It seems that the bandaid tool preserved the bokeh in the BG nicely. What do you think?

Technical Details

Z9 600mm f4 (1/4000 sec at f8.0, ISO 2500, fill at -2.0ev) Topaz DeNoise, bump up in exposure, Band-Aid tool for twig removal, crop for comp…Jim

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2 Likes
2

Jim, this looks like a great capture to me! I like the pose and that so much of the bird is in the field of focus. The comp looks fine, but I wouldn’t crop any tighter.

I agree, blue jays are great subjects even though they are common.

1 Like
3

Excellent, Jim. I like the partially raised wings and the head turn. If you feel like it, I could see removing the second stub coming into the frame, but otherwise an excellent image.

4

Hi Jim, I like the cropping and the details look great. A fine pose too. I also find these birds quite spooky so hats off to get this catch.

5

They may be common and invade the yard like a horde of rowdy bikers, but I have zero shots of them simply because they are so active and skittish. So I like this for the very reasons you state - great light and detail plus that pose is really engaging and speaks to their personalities really well. They’re gregarious and pushy sometimes, but I love them and often use their raucous sentinel call to give me a head’s up to something else in the area, often it’s a raptor or other predator and that’s always fun. Well, unless you’re a songbird.

6

I like this pose a lot. I think the OOF background snow compliments the whites of the bird. Well done! I have blue jay envy. We only have steller’s and scrub jays here in the Sierra. I think blue jays are wicked cool looking jays.

7

I miss these eastern jays - I think they are the most beautiful of the jays.
Excellent shot -great pose and bright eye, and the bit of snow adds a lot.