Red-Shouldered Hawk Portrait

[Melissa Groo]

Canon 5d Mark II
Canon EF 300mm f/4 IS +1.4TC
ISO 100
1/60 sec
f/5.6
Handheld

Taken this spring at Corkscrew Audubon Sanctuary in Florida. Sharpened, levels, curves, contrast in CS3. I know the clarity is not great, but wondered how else to improve.
Thanks so much in advance for any comments and critiques.

[William Malacarne]

He is a little tight in frame....could use more space bottom and right side for my taste. Clarity is probably due to low shutter speed, could increase it by raising the ISO, you can safely go much higher with the 5D.

Bill

[Julie Kenward]

Melissa, good advice by William on the technicals. Did you crop a lot off this? I'd definitely loosen up the crop if you did. I'd definitely add more to the top - the poor bird looks like if he tries to stand up he'll hit his head on the edge of the frame. :D This is one of those "invisible" guideline things - you want to leave enough space for the feet when they are covered in the water and you want to leave enough room for the head if the bird were to stand up. I'd put at least another inch on top...

I'd also look at cloning out that patch of vegetation in the LRC if you can. The stuff in the ULC isn't too bad and actually adds a bit to the image but the pile in the LRC really takes away from the image IMO.

Do you know how to use the High Pass filter in PS? It might help you get back a little texture in the bird's feathers.

[Melissa Groo]

No Julie, I actually didn't crop it at all! I really had no choice with giving more space, the hawk caught something from the swamp in front of me and then landed on the boardwalk railing close by, and I had 440mm going with my lens and TC and so he was just really tight in the frame. I probably could have backed up but then he might have flown. So do I fudge it by creating more canvas atop? I haven't done that before but could probably figure it out. As for the High Pass filter, no, I don't know how to use it. Is it pretty straightforward, or do you know of a good tutorial online?
Thanks for all your comments and suggestions.

[Melissa Groo]

Thanks Bill. Yes, I know that now. This was in my early days of both my 5D ownership and my efforst at bird photography, earlier this year. Will definitely raise ISO next time!

[pat lillich]

Melissa, beautiful bird, beautiful shot. I think you can add some canvas up top to give him headroom and clone in some of that nice blurry background. I'm going to go look up the High Pass filter - I think Artie posted about it on one of the birds I posted -- if I remember right, it did really well at bringing back some of the detail. Love his gorgeous sharp beak -

[Melissa Groo]

Thanks so much, Pat!

[Julie Kenward]

Melissa, sorry...had to come home from work and eat a little dinner!

Okay, high pass filter is great for adding sharpening or texture right in areas that are a bit more diffused than what we would like. In this image I duplicated the BG layer first (but if you have multiple layers then you would combine the layers with Ctrl + Alt + E). Then go to filters/Other/High Pass. Your top layer will go to a funky gray color. What you're looking for is a slight white edge to appear around the parts you want to crisp up. For this image, I used 5.5 as the setting. In some images you'll only use 1-2 and in some you'll use 15! Once you see the beginnings of the white areas around the gray image then you go over to the layer palette and change the blend mode to either Overlay or Soft Light. I almost always prefer Soft light as it's not quite as harsh. Now you can either bring the opacity down a bit (I went to 96%) and you can also add a layer mask and paint out some of the "brittleness" in areas where you don't really need the extra sharpness (like the head and beak, legs, etc.) This is a quickie version of what I did...you might take more time and play around with it more and see if you like what it does to your image:

High pass filter is a great sharpening tool to have in your arsenal. Play around with it and try it out on different things like feathers, fur, tree bark, etc.

[John Chardine]

Hi Melissa- Were you close to the subject or was this a big crop?

I'll talk about the techs. Totally agree with Bill. You are using one of the best digital SLRs ever made and that body can perform extremely well at ISO 400 or 800 and even higher. You need to explore this which will provide a lot more forgiving conditions to produce a sharp image.

[Geoff Warnock]

Hi Melissa, nice bird!

There's a great tutorial for extending canvas here: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?41898-Extending-your-canvas-made-easy

I've had great success with the method. With your nicely blurred and even background I think you could be very successful in adding to top and right.

Personally I would still consider toning down the greenery in the backround top left, maybe with some low opacity cloning from the yellow areas.

[Melissa Groo]

Geoff, thanks so much. That's really helpful. I will check it out. And consider toning down the greenery.