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BPN Member
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!
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at
http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
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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.
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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
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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.
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