"One swallow does not a summer make"

[Dennis_Plank]

Attributed to Aristotle. One may not make a summer, but a dozen or so makes it close enough to spring for me. Ours started showing up three days ago and they’ve come with a bang. A combination of Tree and Violet-Greens thus far and they all look like males, but the rest won’t be far behind. I mount perches to some of the posts that support our boxes and this is one of them.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

Anything you might note. There isn’t too much processing on this besides a crop, some Topaz Detail on the bird and perch and an exposure adjustment on the darks of the swallow through a TK Darks mask…

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Anything.

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

(If backgrounds have been removed, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)

7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 600 mm, hand held, f/8, 1/1600, iso 1250, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped from a horizontal original to a 9.1 MP vertical. Taken this morning at 8:12 am (need to change cameras to DST).

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[Skip_Layman]

Nice straight forward shot. Tough exposure and you nailed it. No nits here.

[David_Bogener]

Nice pose/head turn. Nice detail in both the whites and darks. Well done.

[David_Schoen]

Excellent color, detail, pose, and composition. As I remember you had a few of these early last year also. I think you could use another half stop of depth of field that would keep the tail feathers in perfect focus.

[Lyle_Gruby]

This is very nice. Those white and iridescent blues(?) look great. IQ is very good. Only thing I’d suggest is sharpening the perch a little bit.

[Allen_Sparks]

Hi Dennis, nicely done. I really like the backwards glance. No nits from me.