Merlin

[Ross Taylor]

This photo was taken in a park in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.


I handheld my Canon EOS 7D mkII and EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens. Settings were f/6.7, 1/125s, ISO 640, 400mm. Shot RAW and processed in Lightroom.


Cropped portrait from a landscape frame to 75% frame height. This is a tighter than I would prefer due to a large distracting branches above the head, and below the tail. I cloned out 4 distracting twigs, one which crossed the tail.


There were some large gaps in the background which showed blown out sky. I plugged them up with cloned branches. I burned the bokeh highlights, blurred and reduced the exposure of the background to reduce distraction. Brought up the shadows and reduced the highlights in the eyes.


This was my most ambitious post processing project to date. I hope the results appear natural? I very much welcome and appreciate your critiques - Thanks for having a look!

Ross

[Karl Egressy]

Nice image, with the bird looking at you. The frame is tight would be nice more space all around.

[William Dickson]

Beautiful detail on the bird Ross. Lovely eye contact. It does look tight in the frame, but I can understand why you had to do this.

Will

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the eye contact, feathers on the talons, details and exposure. Good PP on the tail Ross.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the direct eye contact, BG isn't the best but it shows the typical environment, the bird and especially the perch look a bit soft to my eye perhaps as a result of too much NR, it should be possible to get sharper details with careful processing

TFS

[Ross Taylor]

Thank you very much for your comments! I have learned how to deal with distractions on the frame edge better than cropping too tight, and to deal with noise a little better :) Much appreciated!
Ross