Hello from Montana

[Sarah Robertson]

I farm for a living,which enables me to enjoy the outdoors and take photos of course. Living in central Montana I have a great opportunity to see and photograph many different kinds of birds. I seem to take the greatest number of pictures of the buteos. Our immediate area has many Swaison hawks. I will hopefully be able to figure out attachments, and would like to submit a photo of one of those Swainsons, along with a Western Kingbird. I was conflicted on the cropping I did on this photo, as to leaving the Kingbird in the upper rt. corner, or coming in closer on the face of the hawk. Taken with Canon 7D on AV; 70-200mm f2.8L lens with 1.4 ext. 280mm; f/4; 1/2000; iso200; I took this photo about 1 1/2 yrs ago. I now see I think I should have closed my aperature more, and perhaps I would have had the Kingbird in the corner in focus? I am looking forward to learning a lot from this community. Al input will be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hello Sarah, and welcome to BPN and the Eager To Learn forum! We are happy to have you here and look forward to many more images. You are in a great place for photographing raptors. There seems to be an eternal struggle between hawks and kingbirds. To date, I don't think any kingbird has deterred any hawk from its mission, but they sure do try! Technically, I think the image would benefit from some noise reduction on the background, and a boosting of the shadows on the birds. I agree with your decision to include the second kingbird but I don't think you have gotten the second one in focus even with a smaller aperture. I believe that the image needs a little more space on the top. The eye is very important in bird images, and I suggest that you lighten the eyes and maybe create a catchlight. If you search the site you will find help on this subject. Thanks for sharing!

[John Chardine]

Hi Sarah- Big welcome to Eager to Learn and BPN! I love the image because it tells such a story. Kingbirds are notoriously aggressive and almost always they get away with it. I would like to see some more detail in the hawk. This is always a challenge because the sky is brighter than it looks to our eye and the tendency is not to compensate for this. If you are in Av, a reasonable compensation is 1 stop over the meter reading to start and see how it goes. Sometimes you may end up with +2 EV or more. You could probably bring more detail to the main subject in processing too (dodging etc) but it's best to lay the foundation in the camera and work from there.

[Bob Miller]

Hi Sarah.....welcome to the forum! I agree with everything said so far! BIF are not easy and you have done a good job at capturing some natural behavior. You can try lightening up the shadows with shadow highlights in PS . I also sometimes use a screen blend mode to bring out detail in t he shadows

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Sarah - this is a stunning capture. I agree with all of Kerry's suggestions, with the lightening of the shadows being the most important one for me. The second kingbird adds a lot to the image, and I'm glad it was included.