Surprise, surprise, I thought the Cedar Wax Wings stopped migrating through this area in early January.  However, a group of about 75+ stopped by today for a mid-morning snack, before heading further south.  As I said in an earlier post, I've been trying to photograph these birds for the past 3 years and this month I've been lucky enough to photograph them twice.  The looks of these birds just fascinates me.  The smoothness of their feathers, coloring, and the masked face are so interesting.
As an aside, I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to plants, trees, and shrubs. Can someone tell me what tree this is?  The seeds/fruit?, appear to look like a bunch of miniature grapes.

Wanted to do something a little different this week that I have been thinking about for quite awhile.  Still-life with a touch of the Renaissance.
I signed up for Joel Grimes Still Life Masterclass and really liked his approach to doing Still life photography.  See www.joelgrimes.com. The basics to his technique is using a single Cross Lighting setup, similar to the Rembrandt Portrait Lighting style, and adding Textures, along with Blending options. These are my first attempt at using this technique.  What do you think?