Thanks James, I too prefer the clean backgrounds but have to deal with what they give me sometimes. The Franklin Gulls are hard for me to get looking right as are the Black necked Stilts. My photoshop skills are quite meager right now and some birds are more difficult than others for me to get right. Can you elaborate on the levels comments. I sometimes find the images too flat but am not sure how to clean them up better without blowing out the hightlights. I've been trying to locate a local source for some photoshop classes but have had no luck so far. I shoot in RAW and I feel my limited post processing skills are not allowing me to get the best out of my images. I do appreciate everyone's comments.