Black Shouldered Perched

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

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The male of my mating pair now so friendly that I can get to withing a few feet of them and caught them in the act last week, unfortunately they opted for the privacy of a pine tree.

Captured EOS 1 D MKIII, f/8 Canon 400 f/5.6 L + 1.4 Con. at 560 mm, 1/640 sec. ISO-200, Pattern Metering, Apeture Priority, +0.3 step

[Morkel Erasmus]

great pose and perch Christopher, unfortunately it is very soft with lack of detail needed for a shot like this, you picked up halos and the sky colour looks a bit unnatural. the image could probably benefit from an entire rework as it seems many of these things are picked up during processing.

[Steve Canuel]

Hi Chris,
This is a nice looking bird and you're fortunate to have a pair so accessible. Is this a crop? I'm seeing some funky things going on in this image. Specifically, the sky appears to have some cloning artifact and posterization and there's a light halo around the bird. Good news is the problems I see are related to processing not capture so you get as many do-overs as you're willing to try :). Hopefully the more experienced/knowledgable members can give you better specifics than I.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

You folks are too good. :)

I attempted a clone job when all of me said "leave the bloody shot alone" which I will in future. I decide to get the sky all one colour as there was light cloud to the left of the bird and then thought "why not remove the branch" which took the better part of 2 hours with " I think I will start again"

Thamks for picking these up I will continue to take baby steps up the PP road.:p

The original photo about a 50% crop.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v651/cookie99/IMG_5741crz3.jpg

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[Fabs Forns]

Hmmmm, you've got to get careful with that cloning tool :)
Beautiful bird, with a very steep angle. The original looks much better.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

You are quite right Fabs, myself and the cloning tool are not good bedfellows and I shall attempt to leave things are nature intended in future, these birds (now my friends) deserve better, I should not intefere with the true beauty of nature.

I have taken almost twelve months to get to know them, so well as they return to their tree when I arrive on my bike and I have the owner of the property's permission for unrestricted acces to their nesting area (only one other photographer can get within 100 metres of them and the location is a closely guarded secret.

My two lovely friends at home.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v651/cookie99/IMG_2807800x600.jpg

http://birdphotographers.net/forums/%5BIMG%5Dhttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v651/cookie99/IMG_2807800x600.jpg%5B/IMG%5D

[Doug Brown]

Thanks for sharing your interesting story behind the photo Chris! The repost is much better than the original post IMO. The bird is somewhat lacking in fine detail though; did you run NR on the entire image? Also, I would desaturate the blues in the sky a little.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Doug, I will add your advice to my steep learning curve and yes I did run noise reduction over the image (possibly far too much):p

[Morkel Erasmus]

agree the original looks better. when running NR always try to select only background and blurred parts since NR kills fine detail. if your subject is too noisy to begin with it might not be worthwhile to try and save it :)
since you can get so close to them I'm full of confidence you'll post a stunner here soon...

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Morkel, I hope I can do justice to your confidence booster.

I have devoted hundreds of hours getting to know these two beautiful birds many without camera in hand and some times I just sit and share a day with them to get to know their habits and sometimes I suspect they are getting to know mine.
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It was suggested by an Ornithologist friend that I might like to feed them some live mice but I refused as I do not want to interfere too much with their natural predation.
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Watching them hunt is a joy, the way they use the winds, sun and cover assures me that they will never need the hand of man to feed them.
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It is great to have their trust but I suspect that I would not want them to cross over into becoming pets.
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I will now put a bit more of an effort into getting beautiful natural photographs of them and hopefully this years chicks (my ambition is to do as little PP as possible) only time and effort will tell.
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Thanks all again for your help it is indeed an invaluable resource.

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[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for the info Chris. the shot you just posted shows you come quite close - in this case you should've just chosen a focus point a bit higher and deeper since the camera focused on the branch in front and below - you would've gotten a great double! keep us posted.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks again Morkel (I amended my spelling mistake of your name above) I had also changed my focus setting from AI Servo to One Shot which I suspect was an error on my part, I am about to head out there now so I will continue experimenting.
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The last photo was as shot (but heavily resized from over 3 meg. to fit here) and I would have been 20 feet from them.
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Thanks again and sorry about your name (reading glasses should be worn to be effective.)

[Morkel Erasmus]

no problem :)