Cedar Waxwing

[sh1209]

I like the stately pose and the nice eye contact. I have some guidelines that I follow for songbird images and while everyone has different criteria for what they find as a good photo here are mine. Of course there are exceptions to everything and if you have great action or something else then these rules may not apply. The perch needs to be beautiful and interesting. Here you just have a stick with no greenery at all or something to make it interesting. The backgrounds needs to compliment and enhance the photo. Without a good background I do not even keep songbird images or take them for that matter. Here you have a plain white sky. I shoot all of my songbirds at or below eye level. Here you have a steep angle which I do not prefer. I prefer my birds to be tack sharp with plenty of details. Not sure if it is because of compression to get the photo to posting size but the waxwing looks very smooth and without fine feather details. The black of the mask and wings in particular. For these reasons I would not consider this photo a keeper. For what it is worth I have only had one really good opportunity with Cedar Waxwings over the years where I was able to get a photo with my above criteria. This is despite seeing them hundreds of times. I literally see them in my yard every day all summer but they are always 30 feet up and do not provide any good photo opps. So I recognize the difficulty that they present but do feel that you could do much better one day when you finally get a chance with the right bird in the right spot. Hope that helps...

Yeah these guys definitely don’t cooperate on the eye level aspect lol. I’d like to get some better images of them but don’t see them much.

 

[Turberticus]

Yeah these guys definitely don’t cooperate on the eye level aspect lol. I’d like to get some better images of them but don’t see them much.

Try finding, and photographing them near water such as a pond. They tend to perch low catching insects on the fly. That's how I managed to capture all of my eye level Cedar Waxwing photos.

https://flic.kr/p/2mVMiZi

 

[sh1209]

Try finding, and photographing them near water such as a pond. They tend to perch low catching insects on the fly. That's how I managed to capture all of my eye level Cedar Waxwing photos.

https://flic.kr/p/2mVMiZi

Very nice

 

[Shutterbug fan 1]

Are you opposed to changing the sky such as darkening it or adding color? Personally, the white sky bothers me.

 

[sh1209]

Are you opposed to changing the sky such as darkening it or adding color? Personally, the white sky bothers me.

I did experiment with it and it looked okay