The Guardian

[Dawn Currie]

Taken at Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Titusville on Jan 27th (Thank you to The Raptor Project for this opportunity). Shot with Canon 450D, EF100-400 f/4.5 lens at 275mm, ISO 200, f/8, 1/800, full frame composition cropped in horizontal direction to 11x14 proportion, processed from raw file to retain detail in shadows and highlights. Wish I had taken a flash with me to help with the strong shadows.

[Tom Redd]

Dawn, beautiful photo. You have captured excellent detail, I always appreciate the irises of the eyes. I think the flash would have helped quite a bit. The image appears to have a bit of noise in the shadows where I would guess you lightened the image to gain the detail. Still, very nice shot.

[Dave Leroy]

I really like the composition, very strong. Nice details through out.

I am pretty sure the 450 has an on board flash which is always an option.

Very good use of dof also.

Dave

[pat lillich]

hey Dawn, gorgeous picture - those feathers on his neck and chest are incredible. love the eyes too. Wish you could have been more to your right, but I hope to get a chance at a picture like this someday...

[Julie Kenward]

Dawn, I just had to give this a try.

I used Viveza to bring up the brightness and reduce the shadows of the darker white areas. I used a hue/saturation layer to pull back the blue cast from the whites. I then chose a white tone on top of his head with the eyedropper, grabbed a soft brush, and painted over the shadowed areas at 20% to bring them up even more.

I recropped taking a tiny bit off the right side and putting the top of the beak in the ROT's top right grid point.

Flash would have been easier but I think this turned out alright. Let me know if you have any questions.

[Tom Redd]

Julie's repost looks great. An improvement to a lovely image to begin with.

[Dawn Currie]

Dawn, I just had to give this a try.

I used Viveza to bring up the brightness and reduce the shadows of the darker white areas. I used a hue/saturation layer to pull back the blue cast from the whites. I then chose a white tone on top of his head with the eyedropper, grabbed a soft brush, and painted over the shadowed areas at 20% to bring them up even more.

I recropped taking a tiny bit off the right side and putting the top of the beak in the ROT's top right grid point.

Flash would have been easier but I think this turned out alright. Let me know if you have any questions.
WOW! You really put a lot of extra work in on this. It looks great. Thank you very much.

[Julie Kenward]

Dawn, it took longer to write down what I did than it probably took to do it. :w3 Once you know what works on one image in pp its easy to try the same things over again on others...and most times it yields a better image than what you thought you had. This one is lovely and I couldn't let the shadow ruin his majestic stare!

[Steve Uffman]

Dawn, really like the capture. Very nice composition. Would love to get an image like that.

Jules, wow you rock as well. Hope I get proficient with PS 5 someday. Have LR 3 down pretty well but began drilling down to learn PS5 in earnest today....my eyes are now crossed and my head hurts:2eyes2: