Male Boat Tailed Grackle

I love the moment with great pose and perch but the color appears a tad off and it seems to be just a little soft both of which can be easily fixed.

Richard, Beautiful details and fanned tail. I love the BG and the pose.

Richard,

I think the pose of the grackle is great, I like the fanned tail and how the bird turned its head back towards you. The bird looks over exposed to me though, the color is off and is lacking in fine details, prehaps +1.0 EV comp was too much? You might be able to correct some of that in RAW.

Superb pose!! To me though, the colors are oversaturated. I think adding less contrast and more sharpening would really make this image stronger too.

Great exposure and capture!

I like the pose and the composition. I agree that this is over-exposed and a bit over-saturated. I'd like more detail and sharpness, but at 1/100th second and f/5.6 you had no margin for either more motion control or DOF. Finally, there's an obvious dark line along the top of the twig that could be from sharpening or from a boundary for noise reduction on the background.

Love the pose. Wish it were a bit sharper and the colors here look much too blue on my monitor.

Hi Richard,
I think everyone has covered the problems with this image. Did you shoot this in Raw or jpeg? Was any post processing done other than downsizing? Is your monitor properly calibrated? With more info maybe we could determine were the colors went wrong for this species.
Thanks for posting,
Ronnie G.

Awesome show of that tail.The look is great to. Looks like a little harsh of light? Nice shot

Thanks for all of your comments. Let me address your points one at a time. First of all I have a Cintique Monitor and it's calibrated every few weeks. I posted this in the premier bird site and colors appear to be correct. The sky was heavily overcast so there was no harsh light. I underexposed the image so as not to muddy up the blacks. It was a tad windy so it's possible the bird could have moved slightly, although it was praised for sharpness and detail on that bird site. This image was not cropped very much and was shot in RAW. Thanks again for all of your comments......

Hi Again Richard,
I would be very careful in what you believe on critique sites. Alot of people will never honestly critique an image as not to offend anyone. That goes for other sites and this one included. I will add you have a better chance of getting an honest critique here on NPN than any other site. I understand that nobody wants to hear their image has problems. That's just simple human nature. Please don't take this wrong but the comments on this image are mostly correct. To move on as a photographer we all need to at least have an open mind towards critiques.
Again thanks for posting,
Ronnie