It’s sad when I have a good shot that’s missing a piece of the puzzle that would’ve made it a great shot- too good to toss - not good enough to do anything with. I have hundreds of them. The “ …make lemonade” technique. We had a major ice storm just before Christmas in 2013 that shut down parts of Ontario for several days. To pass the powerless time I shot around the feeder trying to capture high speed images of the birds in flight displaying their wings against a snowy background. The chickadees were the most plentiful so I positioned myself close enough to get good detail yet wide enough to keep them in frame as I tracked with them speeding to and from the feeder. My technique yielded several good shots. The cardinals were much fewer in number - slower and easier to track, but because of my proximity to the feeder the framing was tighter. As a result, in many shots the composition was poor or they were partially cut off. That was the case in this sequence of shots where I caught the female rising up and about to land on an off-screen perch. Individually they each had a certain beauty but none were good enough to stand on their own. It wasn’t until the following August while browsing through my good-not-greats that I happened across these again and solved the puzzle.
