Hi Terry,
Thanks for the thoughtful review. I think the blue is a bit much too, but I didn't push the saturation slider. The river was mostly dark. The sun, on my left, was just beginning to pop over the tallest trees. George took off upriver and flew down the center of the stream in my direction. I snapped off two frames as he went by. In the first one he was in the dark. In the second one -- this one -- he popped into a shaft of sunlight while everything else remained dark. When I took the frame off the D3 I was afraid that because of the wild dynamic range I'd blown him out, but by pulling the highs down I discovered that all the detail was still there. Reducing brightness brought up the blue. I yet may pull it down a bit.
Frankly, I'm not sure a crop is going to change anything. On the other hand, my one beef about the picture is the tree on the right and its reflection. It almost looks like light-struck film, though nowadays nobody knows what that looks like. I'm tempted to crop the tree, and if I do I'm probably going to end up pretty close to a letterbox crop.
If I brought extra lens blur to the background it wouldn't be the first time. Here's an extreme example from nine years ago. The lens was at f/6.3 and the background was very distracting. In George's case I'm not sure the background is that distracting. It makes clear the fact that I was tracking the bird down the river.
