first attempt at being a little more dramatic. trying new things.

does this work you guys?

1/500s f/5.0 at 300.0mm iso640 shot late in the evening

Niether works for me. The first one isn't particularly dramatic--you might try hammering it in photoshop to see if you can get something more interesting.

The second one suffers from inadequate depth of field to work for me. I could live with the oof foreground, but the oof beak is distracting.

pic #1 is beautiful . i love how the light hits the bird did you plan that?or did you just take a picture?

Kudos for trying something different. #1 is not to my taste, most times a bird won't look look good in nearly complete shadow. Second almost makes it, but I'm with Johnny about the beak.

Nice attempts, it's hard to get out of the mold, and it's even harder to get out of the mold and make it work. I have to agree with the others, the shots don't do much for me. On the positive side, you got closer to that CWW than most I've seen around here.

Nice tries Dave and always worth pushing the boundaries so keep it up.
#1 does not work for me as I can't see what you are trying to achieve.
# 2 has some potential I think which comes from the eye and the reflection in it. Maybe a much tighter crop with the out of focus beak being much more over to the left and less of a point of interest.
Martin

thanks for the honest replies guys, appreciate it. ill take the comments here and use them next time i mess around with new things

It's always nice to try new things and equally nice if you share the results

If a "dramatic" picture was your goal than you did not succeed IMO but both captures are really nice.

Love the colors in #2.