Falcon Approach

[Adhika Lie]

Still from the falcon colony; this one is a final approach & flare pose. Watching these birds fly is indeed a joyous occasion. They will abruptly increase the angle of attack and stall their wings to stop their forward motion. Cropped from the UL corner from 25MP to 17.4MP. Tech when shooting: 400mm, 1/1600 sec, f/6, ISO2000; overcast sky so there was not much light. I am not sure if I have processed this well. Exposure -0.35, Bring down highlights half way down and shadows up slightly more than half (+62), whites and blacks to add back contrast. Vibrance slider in LR got boosted to +30. Nik CEP Detail extractor on the bird on low opacity (35%) and then lower the contrast on the OOF BG a little bit.

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[Andrew Harrell]

Adhika: While your technicals seem spot-on, I felt the bird was a little small in the picture. Which got me thinking about a different crop. Hope you don't mind, I took the liberty and gave it a try ...... what do you think?

AP


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[Adhika Lie]

Wowza, nice crop, AP! I am usually very reluctant to make a big crop; I usually limit it to 50% crop top. But I can totally see this in that tighter crop. Thanks for the suggestion! :)

[Diane Miller]

Processing looks and sounds great! How fantastic to stop this bird in flight, and against a BG, too! Kudos!

I like Andrew's crop, or even go vertical. Looks like you have the IQ to crop this one!

Hoping to see more from here!!

[Warren Spreng]

Great catch, I like it either way!

[Adhika Lie]

Diane & Warren, thanks! Here is a re-crop. Output sharpening using Nik Dfine 40% on the sharpening slider and 30% on the focus slider. I am still not sure what those sliders mean. I just slide it until I I like how the picture turns out.

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[Glennie Passier]

Adhika, your understanding of this craft is really starting to shine! Great deail and pose. Love the cliff face BG. My only very minor suggestion would be to clean up the foliage down the LHS edge and the tiny spot (dust bunny?) off the last bit of stick on the downward slope.

Well done Adhika. Beautiful!

[Adhika Lie]

Glennie, thanks! I thought about cleaning up the ledge but decided that it would look too sterile. I will clone that tiny spot though. But it is not dust bunny, it would be way more OOF for a dust bunny to look like that, must be something that I just froze with that shutter speed, too. LOL. With this juvenile, I find 1/1600 is really the slowest I could go for inflight shot and that would be on their slowest part of the flight (like this one). I really need much higher shutter speed (and thus higher ISO capability*)

* Do I sound like someone justifying for the D500? LOL

[Glennie Passier]

No justification needed. LOL