coming at me!

Upland buzzard picture taken Saturday at Bulaotun in Beijing.
Attachment 157279
Nikon D4S and Nikkor 600 F4
ISO 400
Aperture 4.5
Speed 1/3200

Gerald:

The total symmetry of wings, legs and tail is great, and I think the centered crop works with this down the barrel pose.

I might consider a bit more contrast/sharpening on the bird to help it pop cleanly from the background. Works as is of course, just an option.

Could also consider toning down the brighter grasses on the left side of the bird.

Thanks for sharing this rarely seen bird with us.

Cheers

Randy

PS: I took a minute to tweak the midtone contrast and to do a little bit of sharpening on the bird. You can do a much nicer job on the original, but I think it shows what I mentioned.

Lovely image Gerald, great work in the field, nice techs ( I personally might have gone for a bit more than F4.5 but just personal preference) , stunning buzzard and he is flying straight into your 600 F4:cheers:

Randy added some more pop to this already wonderful image, all that is left for me is to congratulate you for this special capture - I will be thrilled to see more from you!

Kind regards,

Spectacular flight image, Gerald. What a beautiful bird and I think Randy aptly said it re the symmetry. Remarkable timing, great light, and wonderful complimentary brown dried grasses.




Geoffrey

Thanks for the advises and comments, and also your tweaking on the picture. I need to improve my PS skills so all advises are welcome.

Thanks for the comments. I would have also prefered using 6.3 or so for the aperture but it did not gave me that time. The buzzard was very active that morning and moving closer and closer to my truck, landing and taking off many times so I kept the settings I had to make sure to get enough shutter speed. The area it was active has lots of changes in light due to snow, lighter grass, darker grass and parts with shadows.
It ended up with the buzzard being so close to me that the last set of pictures were only close up of parts of him.

Beautiful incoming flight pose and love the eye contact. Good display of the habitat too

Randy's RP makes the bird pop a little more

TFS

Great shot, I agree with a little more pop you did well to nail the focus.