Motif: Gray Jay

Congratulations! This is the Image of the Week selection for the Birds Gallery, week ending 5th October, 2012!This is a setup that I do very rarely.
In fact this is the first one for this year.
I managed to position the perch in a way that I captured this nice looking fall backgroud.
These birds are very tame in Algonquin.
Still it is a lot of fun to watch them, feed them and photograph them.
Thanks for looking.

Canon 1D Mark IV
Canon 500 f4.0 L IS
Manual Exposure
Shutter Speed 1/800
Av 7.1
ISO 1600
EF500mm f/4L IS USM
Flash at -2 1/3

Nice shot! It's like the jay has a halo! Great exposure, too.

SFJ

Super frame this Karl

Lovely image Karl. One of your best. You did really well here. The perch is really nice and so is the background. The head turn is just right {maybe some prefer a bit more to the left) and so is the lighting. Although many of these gray jays in Algonquin Park are banded, nice to see you captured one without the bands (unless they were cloned out).

PS. Compare these jays to the bluejay.....what a difference in behaviour. People feed bluejays too but you'll rarely see a bluejay land on your hands like a gray jay often does in Algonquin.

Absolutely gorgeous Karl. Great pose and the BG colors are wonderful. I'm sure Alan would be pleased if he had captured this

OntPhoto wrote:Lovely image Karl. One of your best. You did really well here. The perch is really nice and so is the background. The head turn is just right {maybe some prefer a bit more to the left) and so is the lighting. Although many of these gray jays in Algonquin Park are banded, nice to see you captured one without the bands (unless they were cloned out).

PS. Compare these jays to the bluejay.....what a difference in behaviour. People feed bluejays too but you'll rarely see a bluejay land on your hands like a gray jay often does in Algonquin.

Thank you Wilson.
It had one on the left leg that I removed and the right leg is covered. Some of them have up to four bands. So far I photographed only a couple that did not have bands throughout many years.

Karl, nicely done!

I love it Karl! The needles really frame the bird out nicely

Sweet capture Karl! It was a beautiful setup. The perch really framed the bird nicely and the bg is very nice. It was a pleasure to meet you their and thanks for sharing the setup. I got my best Grey Jay shots ever that day.

Rick Dobson wrote:Sweet capture Karl! It was a beautiful setup. The perch really framed the bird nicely and the bg is very nice. It was a pleasure to meet you their and thanks for sharing the setup. I got my best Grey Jay shots ever that day.

Thanks, Rick.
It was a very nice meeting with you.
I also had my best ever Gray Jay shots (a few dozens of them lol) and the best ever Spruce Grouse shots, both female and male.
It is such a great place!!!!!!!!

Absolute cracker of an image....looking so alive!!!

Everything works so nicely here Karl. I've extoled the image's greatness before, but it deserves more!
I've never seen such a colorful, wonderfully composed, perfect perch gray jay image like this before.
It's awesome.

Beautiful Karl. You did well!

This is gobsmacking.

Beautifully composed and captured image.
Regards
A. Meir

These are so common here and I have yet to get a decent shot of one. Very nicely done!

Karl,

This might just be your best yet! Spectacular.

I like it a lot, however if this is successful often I might try to be more creative with the perch.. I do not like the brown needles.

Karl
It's beautiful. A terrific bird....with the perfect look and simple but colorful setting. Oh how I'd love to have this one.

Nice pose and perch Karl.