Spring Construction 2

Nice nest building shot Dave. I like the complexity of the nest, just a bit more of a head turn to get the whole eye in would have been nice. I assume this has been cropped because there is noticeable noise in the larger version. I think you could also tone your flash down a bit and still fill the shadows, As for the blue, did you try desaturating the cyan, I think that may tone some of the nest material down if that is what your working towards, but I'd do it selectively or the BG will desat as well, but IMO the nest material doesn't detract from the bird now. Always interesting to see shots like this, thanks for posting.

Yea I forgot to mention it was a heavy crop because of the distance, normally I do not use flash, I tried it in this series. Problem for me is I cannot tell how it really looks until I get it on the computer. I did tone done the brightness in CS5.

Interesting behavioral shot. When I first opened the image, my first reaction was to the flash. The balance between the ambient exposure and flash is a delicate one. I usually dial in at least -1 2/3 flash compensation and sometimes much more depending on subject distance to avoid the flashed look.