Red-Tail

[Paul Lagasi]

On a recent trip to Amherst Island, we were able to get close to this hawk..usually they are gone the minute you stop the car. We has a barn for cover and he sat there giving us a chance to snap a few images before he left.
I know he's a little centred but I like the perch and wanted to leave the bend in....thanks for looking

D300
300 2.8 wi 1.4tc
f6.3
1/2500
iso-400
handheld
crop 35%
cleaned away some branches

[Dave Blinder]

Nice pose and perch Paul. Unfortunately, it looks like the head and most of the body here is in the shadows, obscuring fine detail on the face and eye. Harsh midday sun? Also, there are sharpening halos around most of the bird, and the perch. I might desaturate the sky a bit.

I think fill flash and careful exposure would have helped in this situation.

- Dave

[Joel Eade]

Agree that the head is position isn't optimum but probably nothing you could do about it. The bird looks to have some noise in it on my monitor. Was this a heavy crop?

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Paul, I like the overall composition. If I were to change any thing I might try taking a little off the bottom. Nice pose and eye contact. I took the image into Photoshop and lighten the shadow using the Shadow/highlight tool. I brightened up the eye a little and tone down the perch by using a multiply layer mask to only show the effect on the perch. On my monitor the sky color look a little unnatural. I tried desaturating the blues and cyan which in my opinion; I thought this helped. Thanks for sharing.

[denise ippolito]

Paul, Good advice already given. I think the one small twig behind the bird could be cloned w/ your good photoshop skills:) Nice pose.

[Paul Lagasi]

Thanks for all the comments..I decided to re-work the image...not sure about why sky looks unatural (camera saw it this way) but I lightened it, worked on halo, cropped out the twig behind the bird, lightened eye.

I need to get new glasses D..I thought you meant the perch, behind the bird, worked for a while removing perch, posted image...then, lolol..I see the twig you were referring too

Dave...this bird is in full afternoon sun, up here we gotta tak-em when we can...lolol..

Thanks you all re-worked image is pleasing at least to me...