Very nice, Bob. Thank you for taking the time to improve my work. This is my first time in the analysis forum, but I sense from everyone's comments that being candid is welcome.

My thoughts: you have centered the mother's head and neck and the chick. In my recent re-tune, I placed her eye at the upper left "thirds" intersection. Cropping was probably my hardest decision because of the extreme sunlight blowing out the rock on the left. My placement reduced that a bit.

I have read that an important part of post-processing is remembering the actual natural color/lighting. I remember the bright sun blowing out the whites. I like the darker look of your version as "art", but your darkening takes it away from what I remember about the moment in nature. That probably is one of the great quandaries of photography.

Again, many thanks to all of you have taken the time to analyze.

Following Graham's advice. Here is an untuned version (saved from ACR), plus my most recent tuned version after reading analysis. I look forward to your help. Dave

Sure, Bob - but I would also include my most recently edited version based on the constructive comments so far. I work PS on an 8GB Windows 7 machine, but I know my monitor is not pro quality. It's certainly possible that I am just not seeing things on my screen. Do you want the NEF without IMF file? And how do I get it to the right person? Thanks.

I worked the shadows and contrast from the NEF. I think I have become much better using ACR 7/8 for spot tuning since I tuned that one eleven months ago. I use PS primarily to add pop by using judicious amounts of soft light blend.

In fact, I just retuned it and wish I could re-submit the latest version. Many thanks for triggering that. Dave

Thanks for your comments, Graham. I'm afraid that the image has been cropped only a little, meaning it was a composition error taking the photo. So I can learn: what do you mean by "cloned out"? (I'm not familiar with that terminology.) Do you mean using PS healing brushes?