Red Shoulder Hawk - Viera Wetlands

[Tim Rucci]

I haven't posted here in over a year and have not been out much with the camera. But a few weeks ago I was with some friends at Viera Wetlands and Merritt Island NWR, and tried to shake off some of the rust and get back in the swing of things. Here is a Red shoulder hawk from one day at Viera.

1DX and 500 f4 with 1.4x II extender (700mm) hand-held, 1/1250 @f5.6, iso 800, cropped from the original frame...

[gail bisson]

Hi Tim,
Welcome back.
Excellent IQ and details.
I like the perch and the soft blue sky.
A bit tight on the RHS ,
Gail

[jack williamson]

Very good detail Tim, agree with the closeness of tail to frame. I would be inclined to lighten the eye a little more, welcome back.

[Lyle Gruby]

Great IQ, like the high-key shot.

[Dave Leroy]

I am quite surprised by the dof you have here. Very well done. Lovely pose and colors. A touch more on RHS would be nice. Good for you to get back at it.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Tim,

Very nice, clean image with great detail. A bit of room on the right wouldn't hurt.

Miguel

[Shawn Zierman]

Light quality: Excellent.
Subject pose: Also excellent. I like how engaged this hawk looks.
Composition: I like the tight crop but agree that more on the RHS is worth considering.
I am also struck by the DOF, basically shooting wide open at an upward angle. How much of the original frame would you estimate this to be?

[stuart wanuck]

love that image

[Karl Egressy]

Striking image, Tim. Love the beautiful details and colours in the bird. It is well positioned in the frame and it seems you had nice soft light. Exposure is spot on.

[Randy Stout]

Tim:

Welcome back. Striking image, the high key effect and soft light really shows the birds details well.

+1 on more space on right.

Cheers

Randy

[PhilCook]

Loving the highly detailed plumage and glassy clear eye, light is wonderful and rather think the white backdrop works nicely in this one....eye candy for sure

[Frank Schauf]

Beautiful portrait, great details and sharpness.

[Tim Rucci]

Thank you all for your kind and helpful comments.

To address a few of the questions raised...

o The crop presented here is slightly less than half the width of the original image. The bird was slightly off center to the right in the original.

o I realize from the multiple comments on the tight right edge that I sacrificed a little bit too much on the composition when I made the tight crop. My intention was to show the bird itself as large as possible in the frame because I wanted the detail to be visible. I probably over-did that a bit.

o As for the 'engaging' pose of the bird, it came about as a gust of wind blew up and the hawk began to lose its balance. The hawk changed from a more upright position to the pose you see in the image as he regained his balance, and that is when I snapped the photo.

o As for depth of field, I am a little bit bummed that the subject distance does not appear in the exif data in the 1DX as it does with some of my other cameras. But I've found that if I click on file info and look through all the HTML looking jibberish, I can locate the subject distance there. It is listed as 207/10, which I presume is in meters. If this is correct, that would make hte subject distance 68 feet. I thought I was a little closer than that but I'm not sure. At f5.6 and 700mm the depth of field would be 12 inches according to my DOF calculator. So this all appears to add up as the entire bird seems to be within the depth of field.

o As for the high-key effect, I was not crazy about not the lack of a rich blue sky at the time, but in hindsight I agree that it works well in this image. I approached the hawk from the left, and the light was coming from the right side. So I moved to the right before taking the shot to get the light behind me as much as possible. I believe the details of the bird may actually stand out better because of the high-key background.

I stated that it had been over a year since I've posted, but after checking I realized it has been more like 3 years. Thank you all again for your warm reception and welcoming attitude. I am off to Africa shortly and have only been able to get out a few times to bond with my 1DX before the trip. I felt the need to get used to the camera and make sure I had all the custom settings the way I wanted them so as not to make mistakes on my trip due to unfamiliarity with the camera. It's quite a bit different than my 1D Mk4 and I am already spoiled.