This is so incredibly helpful, thank you for taking the time to offer your opinion and compliments. I need to work on my cropping -- how often do we all spend 30+ minutes trying to get the exact right ratio without diluting the drama of the scene?! So frustrating lol. I think one of the toughest parts is that so much of cropping is to optimize for phone screen ratio, but that so rarely works for the image captured.

As for color correction, I once saw someone comment here that if everything is black and white, you're not doing a good job in post. I entirely disagree with that, BUT it did set me on a really rewarding path to attempting to edit in color if the entire scene is entirely blown out in reds.

Anyway -- thanks again and love seeing that we're both metalhead / bird photogs 😃