Brown Falcon at sunset

[Scott Turner]

Species
Common Name: Brown Falcon
Scientific Name: Falco berigora

Date: 1/12/14

Location: Newns, Central-West NSW

Camera Details
Brand/Model: Canon 1DX
Lens: 500mm F4L IS + 2xTCIII

Camera Settings
ISO: 2500
F-Stop: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/2000s
Exposure Bias/Metering/Flash: Pattern Metering, 1 stop off sky

Technique: Mounted on my Gitzo GT3542LS tripod with my Jobu Pro 2 Gimbal

Attraction Aides: none

Post Production: Very heavy crop as the Falcon was pretty far away. Basic adjustments done in Canon's DPP 4 with noise reduction and slight shadow boost detail and highlight recovery, imported into photoshop and sharpened with an unsharpen mask and used a Nik detail extractor and finally saturated the cloud colour just by +5 to make the background pop a bit more.

Notes: The settings I had were for parrots that were flying around and I was aiming for in flight shots and just happened to see this Brown Falcon land for 5 seconds before taking off again. If I could do it again I would reduce my ISO and get slightly possible, but C'est la vie.

The composition is odd I know. I've had a few people comment about it not in a bad way but just that it's not the usual composition for bird photos, but I wanted to include the whole tree as part of the shot as well. What's your opinion?

[arash_hazeghi]

I think this image would work a lot better of cropped closely with only the branch the falcon is perched on

[Scott Turner]

Cheers Arash, I think that would idea, but unfortunately the image I have now is already heavily cropped down to about 1800 pixels on the width and to get it much smaller, I'm worried it would ruin the quality to much and not usable online for social media and other things. What's your opinion? (ps. I used Artie's and yours DPP guide for editing the picture actually, and wow! it's amazing great work!)

[Daniel Cadieux]

I kinda like the result you got here. I would have preferred the falcon look the other way though, and I'd add back some canvas at right to match the amount of space at left. The faint hint of clouds really adds a lot.

[gail bisson]

Hi Scott,
Love the painterly feeling created by the light but I agree with Arash that the crop needs to be tighter.
By the sounds of things, any bigger crop would wreck the IQ.
Gail

[Raybel Robles]

I agree with the above comment than a tighter comp would had improved the composition considerable. I find the perch to the right to be too much of a distraction. Maybe by cloning them out and re working the composition could help the image. Less from the right, less from the top and more from the bottom.

[Marina Scarr]

I am really loving the feel and composition of this image! It's unique. It's painterly. Well seen and executed.