American Kestrel

[Raul Quinones]

High key- bird in stick picture, another shot from the same previous posted kestrel. I have never been a fan of high Key pictures, but I have no option because the light. The bird was close, at a low angle, and nice pose, I just could not resist.

1/640, F8.0, ISO 500, 700mm, EC +1 2/3, almost FF
40D, 500mm, 1.4TC, Tripod + wimberly head
Shooting Date/Time: 7/8/2009 10:52:57
Location: Utuado, Puerto Rico

C/C are always welcome, Raul

[Amy Marques]

Hi Raul. I like the fanned out tail. Normally I do like high key images but this one doesn't seem to work and would definitely have looked better with the sky showing. I think maybe I would have preferred a tighter crop with the falcon lower in the frame. I do love these kestrels and I have my sights on training one this fall.

[Aidan Briggs]

Nice high key effect, and HA. The head looks a little soft, and the angle is a bit steep though.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like it. I like the tail feathers' translucence. The kestrel's colours look good against the white BG...did you have to punch up the saturation? I'm finding that there is too much room below where the branch comes into the frame...this one would look better cropped with the branch coming straight out of the corner instead.

[Ilija Dukovski]

Agree about branch coming out of corner. I like the BG, perhaps the RH edge of the bird could be feathered a bit.
Other than that it is very interesting.

[Brian Barcelos]

Raul, I like this one. Love the body posture and that fanned out tail looks beautiful. I might crop up a little from the bottom just up too the beginning of the branch. Congrats.

Brian

[Raul Quinones]

Thanks all for comments.


...did you have to punch up the saturation? I'm finding that there is too much room below where the branch comes into the frame...this one would look better cropped with the branch coming straight out of the corner instead.

Daniel, I had the feeling I went too far with the saturation... thanks for confirming my suspicions.

Regarding the composition, I could have gone tighter, but one time I was offer the suggestion to never come out of corners with branches, because "it reinforces the square form of the frame"

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Hola Raul.

Lovely looking bird. I guess this is my favorite from your images. I also find the saturation a bit strong.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I think it works beautifully, I would take away a tad of contrast though, nice detail, species, and pose.
Congratulations.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

A bit punchy, but I love the HK look. Great to see the fanned tail. Sharpness appears OK to me. :)

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks all for comments.



Daniel, I had the feeling I went too far with the saturation... thanks for confirming my suspicions.

Regarding the composition, I could have gone tighter, but one time I was offer the suggestion to never come out of corners with branches, because "it reinforces the square form of the frame"

You're welcome Raul. I'll disagree about that statement you were given about NEVER having branches come out of corners. There are some times that it looks quite good and balanced doing so...I've done it plenty of times, and will continue to do so if I feel the comp is pleasing that way. :-)

[paul leverington]

I love the shot --I love the high key.

What would I do if this were my shot?

1) I'd crop off the bottom to lessen the ammount of negative space which is getting too dominating over the bird. I would not let the stick come directly out of the corner.

2) I'd pull back on the contrast as it as is doesn't match up with the soft lighting one would expect on a overcast cloudy day. I would also do loclaized tweaking with a mask with the new contrast setting. Maybe several masks with different contrast settings. The lower contrast would also lower the saturation's darkness, therefore bringing back some of those nice pastel looking qualities of an overcast day.

3) The image looks like it was sharpened globally because it has that cut out and been pasted look. I would start over with the sharpening using a mask applied to several different layers, each one addressing the different types of edge qualities within the shot. I don't sharpen globally very often nowadays because I found that rarely does a picture have the same type of edges throughout. So often to get softer areas to look good, the edges that are more well defined get oversharpened. I also use a lot of photokit sharpening. The depth of field brush can be very handy for spot stuff.

Looking up to this bird a little as is here doesn't bother me, at least not a whole lot, as that's most often how we see a bird. True a bit more power would be had if he was eye level, but that alone does not kill the shot. The fact that he is looking straight at us with his head cocked really helps to put more interest and power into the shot, and makes up greatly for the shooting angle being so steep.

Paul

[Raul Quinones]

Thanks to all.

Paul,
I really appreciated item 3 in your critique, need to work on sharpening in layers, I have improve my PS skills from none to a little (most from comments in this forum)... another tool I hope to add.

Thanks again.
Raul

[paul leverington]

I'm glad I could help Raul, and I'm glad you appreciated the help. I hope you max this shot out because very honestly I really, really love it. Even the stick has great character to it. Tweak it to perfection and print it on a high end printer using some epson velvet fine art and I believe you might make some do-re-mi!!

Paul