Southern hawker

[Jonathan Ashton]

Canon 1DX Canon 100-400L Auto ISO 500 1/2000 sec f8 manual focus
All C&C welcome, this is the male, common hawker.

[Ron Conlon]

Oh man, this is terrific! The comp, the background, and of course the in-flight subject parallel to you all tucked in and on a mission. So the nit I propose to pick is truly a small one--I would tone done the bright twisted blade in the upper left quadrant, it draws my eye away from all the good stuff elsewhere in the frame. Bravo!

[Steve Maxson]

You nailed this one, Jon! Nice light and one of the sharpest dragonfly-in-flight shots I've seen! I like the pleasing background, though I would agree with the tweak suggested by Ron. Excellent work!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks Ron & Steve, I did consider tweaking the background but I decided not to just to gauge what people's responses were. If I were to use this in any competitions one of the first things the judge would look for is an idyllic background and if it is too idyllic then he would suspect some cloning or patching had been going on - even if it hadn't!

[Diane Miller]

Incredible! And doubly so with MF!

The BG is truly idyllic. You could tone down the spot without cloning, with a careful soft-edged mask and some color work, if that would meet with less objection.

Is this a crop or does the 100-400 focus that close?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Incredible! And doubly so with MF!

The BG is truly idyllic. You could tone down the spot without cloning, with a careful soft-edged mask and some color work, if that would meet with less objection.

Is this a crop or does the 100-400 focus that close?
Diane the 100-400 doesn't focus all that closely, what I have done more recently is place the larger extension tube behind the lens, the next post I make will show you the effect, that image is cropped only slightly.