Beautiful shot of the elusive Black Nape Shaheen. Looks like a female of at least three years old due to the defined colors and yellow cere and nare. She is perfect. As a falconer I have had many North American native falcons and a few African Barbarys but the Black Nape is one of the most sought after in the world due to its beauty and it awesome hunting ability . Sorry about my babbling but this is a treat to see. Even in the ornithological community there are not allot of great shots of this falcon.
The shot is very nice and exposure looks great. Beautiful perch,HA, catch light and BG. The only crit is the obvious steep shooting angle but Im sure its as good as you could get. Thanks for sharing!!
Thank you David for your kind words and info.. I have made more images in different lighting...will share soon ...also one with the kill :-) , About the the steep angle... I wish I had taken a picture of myself how I shot this, I was almost at the edge of the cliff.
Varun, I laughed when I read your response about the image of you at the edge of the cliff. I have been in many hair raising situations at falcon nests on the edge of cliffs also. Look forward to your other pics.
I'm taken away by the beauty of the bird, the sweet light, the complimentary perch and fine background. Of course a slightly better shooting angle would have been preferable, but not always possible, and everything else is so good that I don't find it a big problem. Yes, please post more of this beauty. And do be careful on the edge of the cliff. :)
Very fine raptor and sweet light. Love the sharpness on bird and nice lichen-rich rock. I see some posterization on BG. And man yes, be careful when close to the cliff! :)
@ Grace : Thanks for your kind words.
@ Juan : Thanks for the kind words...even I can see a bit posterizationon on BG, even the image I worked on PS had much darker BG, once I saved and uploaded it here the overall image looks bright..Maybe it's got something to do with the compression of getting the image under 250KB size.
Sweet light and bird. Sharp with a good exposure. As you could not have gotten lower moving to your right until the shadow went away would likely have made it look as if you had been lower... I think .
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@ Arthur : Guruji, thanks a lot for your kind words, The place I was lying and photographing this was a very small clearing on the rock, maybe I had 1-2ft to my right ... moving a bit more I was not sure if it would have made a difference...surrounding the clearing was only thorny bushes..
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Shaheen Falcon
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