Female red Tail With Nest Materials ~ High Key

[Jim Fenton]

Perfect light for high key images this morning with total bright cloud cover and a reflective snow surface to illuminate the underside of this female red tail.

Their 5 year old nest blew down during a thunderstorm last August and she is busy re-building it as breeding time is near.

Image created this morning in Haverhill, MA.

Nikon D300s, 600VR, ISO 1000, f6.3, 1/800, CW metering, NearuniWB, +3 EV

[denise ippolito]

Jim, I love the image design and the thin branch adds nicely to it. I also love the pose and fanned tail with the color. I might remove the cyan from near the bill if it were mine. Great looking image! One of my favorites of yours-and you do have a lot of great ones.:S3:

[Randy Stout]

Jim:

Although I am not a huge fan of high key, this might convince me to change my mind.

I like the comp, sticks mainly behind the bird so it doesn't block her, beautiful underwing illumination,excellent exposure, flared primaries.

Cheers

Randy

[Dave Leroy]

Nicely done.

At first I thought I would have preferred the lighter tones of hawk a bit darker for more separation from bg, but I think I prefer this approach.

The colour of the tail feathers stand out for me.

A very artistic appeal in the photo.

[arash_hazeghi]

nice pose and nesting material but a red-tailed hawk doesn't look like that in real life, it is way too white and bright in particular the tail has lost its colors, from the EXIF looks like you overexposed the original by a good stop or two and then pulled down the exposure in post.

[Jim Fenton]

Arash...

You California types obviously have never seen a red tail in flight against bright clouds with brilliant white snow shining up at the underside. Our rebuttals absolutely look like that fron the underside.

I didn't pull this down one bit in post and I had to use +3 EV with the WB preset and to not underexpose the underside AND to intentionally blow pout the cloudy sky.

It never hurts to open ones mind....

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Beautiful moment, colors and pose. And yes, RTH can show quite some variation in their colors across the US and include such light-colored versions. A brief look in the Sibley will confirm this.

JR

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash...

You California types obviously have never seen a red tail in flight against bright clouds with brilliant white snow shining up at the underside. Our rebuttals absolutely look like that fron the underside.

I didn't pull this down one bit in post and I had to use +3 EV with the WB preset and to not underexpose the underside AND to intentionally blow pout the cloudy sky.

It never hurts to open ones mind....

Jim, I have had plenty of high-key hawk shots my self, IMHO it doesn't look like a RTH, Can you post a screen shot from the RAW? I am interested to see what the original exposure was like because the +3EV does not make sense to me, the exposure is way too much for that ISO...but I could be wrong.


Here is what a RTH looks like in high-key, yours is an adult so the rusty tail should look more saturated compared to the juvenile, I also see artifacts in the head area.

89738

[arash_hazeghi]

Beautiful moment, colors and pose. And yes, RTH can show quite some variation in their colors across the US and include such light-colored versions. A brief look in the Sibley will confirm this.

JR

JR, Can you should me a photograph of a RTH specie with the undersides as white as a seagull like Jim's photo in pane #1? I am very interested to see and learn.

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Do you have the Sibley? Look at the Eastern version on p. 123 and compare to the Western versions. Much lighter. JR

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Here some links with images. JR

http://www.homepages.dsu.edu/palmerj/sdou/documents/RTHA.pdf
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-tailed_hawk/id (under field marks)

[arash_hazeghi]

Do you have the Sibley? Look at the Eastern version on p. 123 and compare to the Western versions. Much lighter. JR

You mean it's a Krider's like this one:
http://robmckayphotography.com/birding-photography-canada/kriders-red-tailed-hawk-in-flight

[Jim Fenton]

Arash...

This will really confuse you...I bet you didn't know we had green skies on the east coast did ya? :)

Untouched RAW converted to jpeg. The reason it is green is because of the NearUniWB preset I use which must be set to the real WB during conversion.

[arash_hazeghi]

Jim,
Thanks for posting, I was wrong, exposure is right on. I feel there is more detail in your RAW file that you should be able to extract after WB correction.

Thanks for clarification, based on the ID images this must be a Krider's RTH with white undersides.

[Arthur Morris]

Stunning image. Looks a lot like the (few) red-tails I saw when I lived in NYC. (I remember that the tail can actually look quite a bit lighter from below.....) The grip on the stick and the position of the stick itself are just too perfect.

Note for Denise: I think that the lores on this species may be bluish green.

[Paul Guris]

Hi, Arash. First, Red-tailed Hawk is the most variable raptor we have in the U.S. so you can't compare two individuals two closely, especially from separate coasts and of different ages. Jim's bird is well within the range of markings for our eastern birds. You mention the rusty tail, but eastern Red-taileds never show rusty tails from below. They have pinkish tales due to reddish coloration from above showing through the whitish surface of the underside of the tail feathers. Here's a link to an image of a bird with as much white as Jim's, just nowhere near as good!

http://www.northrup.org/photos/osprey/osprey-in-flight.htm

Since Jim's picture is being illuminated by the reflection off of the snow, the white of the ventral feathers reflect much of that back. The bird's tail is less pink because the reflection from the whitish surface below does not allow as much color to show through. Ditto for the trailing edge of the wing. Put this bird over an asphalt parking lot and it will look very different because the sun above would be the stronger light and more upper surface pattern and color will show through the wing and tail.

FYI, calling any a Red-tailed a "Krider's" because you think it looks like a picture is fraught with error. For one thing, its range is nowhere close to Mass. For another, even the experts can't always identify birds to subspecies. The photo you linked to has a bird with white on the face, bands showing through on the tail, an incomplete belly band, and fine non-solid patagial markings on the front of the wing. Jim's bird doesn't share even one of those traits. If you'd like to delve into Krider's more deeply, here's a link to an article in Birding magazine (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/www.aba.org/birding/v42n2p38.pdf) by two real raptor experts. It's very complete.

[Daniel Cadieux]

This bird looks pretty much like how I expect to see a RTH in my parts too.

Fantastic image Jim. I love the high-key look, the branch is perfect in placement and size, and of course the hawk is a beauty.

[denise ippolito]

Stunning image. Looks a lot like the (few) red-tails I saw when I lived in NYC. (I remember that the tail can actually look quite a bit lighter from below.....) The grip on the stick and the position of the stick itself are just too perfect.

Note for Denise: I think that the lores on this species may be bluish green.

I didn't know-thanks. :S3:

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Love the hi key ! The twigs add to the image .