Young Sharp-shinned Hawk

[Bill Jobes]

I saw this juvenile sharpie earlier this summer.
Time of day was evening. The bird had just taken off from a perch in pursuit of another bird which I could hear, but didn't see.
It flew into a shaft of bright sunlight, in a setting that was mostly shady from tall trees.

Nikon D300
Nikon 600II VR with 1.4 TC.
1/2500
F/7.1
+ 0.3 EV
ISO 800

Critique and comments appreciated !

[Ben Egbert]

Gorgeous shot. Exposure, head angle, wing position and background are all perfect to me. I like the clouds behind the bird as a way to really make the bird stand out, and the blue sky saves the background from being all white.

[Harshad Barve]

great shot this is , wing position and BG is great
TFS

[Mike Tracy]

I like the trailing foot / leg and upward turn of his head. The sky looks overly saturated which has manifested some noise. The bird itself looks too contrasty to a degree.

[Aidan Briggs]

Ditto Mike. I would also like to see a bit more space in front, and a little less on the bottom. I think a horizontal would've worked best here.

[Morkel Erasmus]

the light and pose in this is killer!! ditto more space in front IMO

[Bill Jobes]

Thanks everyone for the compliments and very constructive critiques.

Excellent observation about the contrast, Mike. I think a few factors are at play here: the sun was very bright, I may have tweaked it a tad too hard in processing, and some seems to have been added somewhere along the line when I did the 'Save for Web'.

And I agree with the comments on the crop of the image. I should have mentioned at the top that this crop was the result of the photo being submitted for magazine cover consideration. That's the aspect ratio you are seeing here.

[Keith Bauer]

The sky color looked pretty odd to me. I downloaded your image and discovered it did not have an embedded color profile. All that has been done to this re-post is embed the sRGB color profile. If you are using a browser that respects the color profile, you'll see a significant difference in both the sky and the rendering of the bird colors.

[LouBuonomo]

When I looked I said that whold make a cool cover..

[Bill Jobes]

I always convert to sRGB prior to web submissions, Keith. But when you "Save for Web and Other Devices" in CS3, I believe it may mask or alter that ... perhaps you know for sure.
By the way, I did not adjust the hue of the sky, but as I recall ( I processed this weeks ago), I believe I added some saturation to the blues to help out a pretty washed out sky which, though bright from the sun setting in the west, was hazy and cloudy in back of the hawk.

[Keith Bauer]

Hi Bill: In CS3 there is a check box labeled "ICC Profile". If that is checked it will embed the color profile that you've assigned in Photoshop. If you don't check the ICC Profile box, even if you've assigned a profile, no profile will be embedded in the image.

[Charles Wesley]

Bill,

Wonderfully clear and colorful image. Most excellent BIF photo.
Thanks for sharing...
____________________
Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL