Red-Shouldered Hawk

[Harold Davis]

this hawk was nice enough to pose for me saturday morning at green cay wetlands. cropped a little for compo and darkened the sky. i did some work to the eye differently than i have ever done. i used a color control point and lightened the entire eye and then painted the light back into the area around the iris. then applied a slight noise reduction to only the eye. how'd i do? i definitely looks better than the original!!

D300, Bigma at 500mm, f/6.3, 1/500s, 0EV, ISO 400, flash fired but was irrelevant at the time.

thanks for looking and comments are appreciated.

[Gus Cobos]

Well done Doctor Davis,
You did well using the Nikon Capture NX2. I like the operation preformed on the eye...:D. The colors and sharp details on your bird are superb. I love that baby blue sky...good show...:cool:

[Alfred Forns]

Gus that is the special Nikon baby blue !!! Unique !!!

Looks good Harold Strong PS work I might go with less perch placing the bird lower an slightly left One fine image anyway you look at it !!! Big Congrats !!

[denise ippolito]

Harold, I'd say you did great -love the soft colored BG -the eye looks perfect! well done

[Oscar Zangroniz]

Great capture H. Like the pose and the detail.
Congrats

[david cramer]

I use the control points much the same way. They are quite flexible. Nice work here!

[Bruce Gove]

Very nice image, Harold. Great light! BTW, I got to play the Prince Course at Princeville, on Kauai - supposedly it's the top rated course in Hawaii according to Golf Digest. Beutiful but humbling....

Bruce

[Lance Peters]

Nice one MR H - gotta love that Nikon Blue - gorgeous bird, great light and sharp :)

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I have no idea what you are talking about with colour control point but it looks pretty good to me. I like Al's comment about the Nikon blue sky, never thought about it but it's true. Very nice shot. Would love to see the before and after of the eye to see what you did. Anyways, looks great!

[SeanKP]

It's a splendid shot Harold. The eye doesn't look processed to me. I'd disagree with Alfred's crop suggestion and if anything would maybe crop a tad off the top to emphasise the length of the perch and the feeling that the hawk is surveying the scene.

Top shot anyway.

Cheers.

Sean

[Harold Davis]

here ya go guys. the original out of the camera.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Good PP work Harold!