Mountain Bluebirds at the nest hole

I was very fortunate to find a Mountain Bluebird nest that was only about 5 feet off the ground; usually they are much higher (except, of course, for the man made wood boxes).

I have here a pair of images, one featuring the female, the other one with the male. The photos were taken exactly 30 seconds apart, at 8:15am.

Settings for both images are the same:
Canon 50D
400 f2.8 with the 1.4 extender (comparable to 896mm on a full frame)
f14
1/400th of a second
ISO 400
very minor tweaking to exposure and color in iPhoto

I used f14 because I was at very close range, and I wanted enough depth of field to get all of the tree in pretty good focus . . . round tree surfaces tend to blur out toward the edges of the frame unless you are at a really small aperture.

I took both images from exactly the same position, but cropped the one of the male a bit tighter - I thought the composition looked better that way, because some parts of the tree trunk are somewhat unattractive/uninteres​ting, and I did not want those portions of the trunk in the image. However, I really liked the way the shadow fell over the left side of the trunk in the image of the female, so I did not crop that out. That shadow helps to provide a bit of depth and dimension in an otherwise "flat" image.

Nice work there Tom.

Your last comments re. the shadowed area of the female crop are spot on in my books which makes that image a better one for me.

Matt.

nice ones Tom