October Project: Backlit Northern Hawk Cuckoo

[Craig Brelsford]

Shooting this northern hawk cuckoo demanded all my fieldcraft skills and much patience. The northern hawk is not the commonest of cuckoos and like all cuckoos is extremely shy.

Device: Nikon D300
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal length: 600mm
VR: ON
Aperture: F/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200s
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: 0EV
Metering: Center-Weighted
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 400

[Randy Stout]

Craig:

A good balance here between backlighting and some detail on the camera side too. Very good pose, like the tucked tail and exposed wing tips, head angle.

I might be tempted to crop in a bit from the right and up from the bottom, and lightly tone down some of th brightest spots in the background.

Congrats on capturing this secretive bird.

Cheers

Randy

[Daniel Cadieux]

Congrats on your approach of this guy - new one for me and with an awesome name to boot!. Sounds like a difficult one to get good images of. I like the bird's pose with primaries extending pretty far out. Good sense of habitat, and I like the fresh-looking greenery. I agree with Randy's suggestions, particualry the bright highlights in the BG (and especially the one below the wing tips, and the one directly above the head). I also find that the tree creeping in at left doesn't add much here...add rather see more of it, or none at all (preferably).

[Craig Brelsford]

Thank you, Randy and Daniel. The bright spots in BG will be an easy problem to solve. I should've been aware of them while processing. The tree I was aware of. If I pull back and show more of the tree, then my cuckoo grows smaller, and I wasn't wanting that. The best alternative may be to clone out the tree. Thanks also for appreciating the rarity and secretiveness of the species. When I saw that bird and realized what it was, I quickly went into full concentration mode. Thanks again.

[Arthur Morris]

You did exceptionally well in difficult circumstances and I love the pose and the clean angle to the bird that you found. I am gonna play with the COMP. Be right back.

[Arthur Morris]

It seemed to hold up fairly well to the crop :)