Red-Tailed Hawk Dallas TX

[Steven Grogger]

This was taken mid-afternoon near my Hotel in Dallas TX. I believe it to be a Red-Tailed Hawk who just finished a snack. The Hawk was on top of a light pole in a nearby parking lot. I sharpened and adjusted the tone curve in ACR, and adjusted shadow/highlights and cropped in PS. Any comments welcome.

Camera: Canon 50D
F-stop: F/5.6
ISO: 200
Focal length: 400mm
Metering Mode: Evaluative

[Lance Peters]

Hi Steven - looks like it has held up not too badly - assuming this is a fairly large crop?
Not crazy about the crop - but not sure what you had to work with.
If this guy was up on a light pole - Think you have done fairly well - don't get a sense of a steep angle.
Keep em coming :)

[Julie Kenward]

I agree with Lance...it does feel soft but not overly so. I'm also guessing this is a large crop and would like to see the original if you have time to upload it. Might be a stronger comp in there somewhere.

[Steven Grogger]

Lance, Jules - Thank you for your critiques.

This is the original.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Steven - thats a pretty large crop - one would expect to see the IQ suffer a bit.
I might have gone with the original - does show the bird in a habitat eve if it is not what we would normally wish for.
:)

[Julie Kenward]

Another thought would be to clone out the two side pieces of the light stand and simply leave the middle section so the bird maintains his perch but stays at the focal point. It might be worth a shot...

[John Chardine]

Steven- I like intimate portraits like this, even if it's done with a crop. I'm not crazy about shooting up at your subject but the effect is not too bad here. I would have given more room at the top, and overall relaxed the crop a bit. I tried some extra sharpening of the posted version in Photoshop and it produced a very good result, so you have the detail there, you just need to bring it out a bit more. Give that a try.

[Arthur Morris]

Huge crops like this work for web presentation and I rather like the crop (sorry Lance) :) A bit of bill clean up here would go a long way....

[Steven Grogger]

Here is my attempt to encompass the whole bird, add a bit more sharpening, and remove the side light stands.

[Myer Bornstein]

I like the repost better but wish there was more canvas to the right