The eyes have it!

[Gerald Kelberg]

Many thanks to all for your encouraging comments on my last post of a Black-winged Kite. After being distracted by work, family and the festive season, I am pleased to post again- trying my chances on another of the series of the Black-winged Kite (Elanus caeruleus) taken in central Spain.

With this image I particularly wanted to show the striking orange irises, with the bird looking directly towards the camera. When this image was taken, the Kite had already devoured the head from the mouse bait and was looking around nervously as other raptors, such as Buzzards, were busy in the area.

I took this shot with the Sony A9II and FE200-600 plus the 1.4X Teleconverter at 840mm. Shutter speed 1/1600 at f/9.0, ISO 1600.

Adjustments in Lightroom, including Enhance-NR and colour adjustments to the background. In PS it was a simple matter of adjusting contrast, resizing and sharpening for output.

As always, your comments and suggestions are appreciated.

Gerald

[Jonathan Ashton]

Looks good to me Gerald, the plumage tones are fine and the eyes look, colours look quite warm, I assume these were ambient. Pose is good and the prey item adds, perch interesting, background unobtrusive but some tonality there to add further interest.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gerald ... what a stare the subject gave you , somewhat frightening with the eye color in combo with the bloody prey :bg3:.
All works well with comp , the subject , perch .... the oh so important HA :bg3: . From my perspective the colors are too much on the magenta side , might be just me .... easy to say as I was not there !!!
Maybe a touch more sharpness .
Nevertheless ... I would like to have something like this in my archive !!!

Nice one and TFS Andreas

[Gerald Kelberg]

Thanks Jon. Thanks Andreas.

Looking again, maybe the colours / magenta are a little warm. The image was shot in quite warm light, but ....

Several factors on the sharpness - I am more likely to under sharpen to avoid over sharpening; the shot was made using a 1.4X teleconverter, through glass; and the file is cropped a little. Probably I just need to be a little more aggressive with sharpening!

Thanks for your thoughts!


Gerald