American Kestrel against Blue Sky

[Jon Rista]

This is my first time posting for critique here on BPN. I've read many pages on these forums, however only recently signed up. The image below is of a wild American Kestrel, perched on a branch of a long-dead tree in Cherry Creek State Park, Colorado. I'd seen this little guy hanging around for a while, however I was never able to capture a photo of it until recently (usually due to poor lighting conditions and my use of an EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L @ 400mm). Here are the statistics:

Exposure
1/800s @ f/8
ISO 160
EC -2/3

Camera
Canon 7D w/ 600mm lens
- EF 300mm f/2.8 L II IS (LensRentals.com rental)
- EF 2x TC III

Time and Location
9/1/2012 11:10 am
Cherry Creek State Park
- Just South of Cottonwood Creek Wetland area

Processing
Not much done in the way of processing. All done in Lightroom 4.1. Cropped a bit, and tweaked exposure, clarity, and vib/sat to bring out all the details. I may have overdone the EC in camera. I used -2/3rd stop, probably only needed -1/3rd stop, to preserve those white feathers on its breast. (He kept landing on branches with odd lighting and shading, so exposure was tricky.) I did a little bit of brush work on the eye to brighten it and bring out a little detail. The rest of the frame was clean, so there was no need to import into Photoshop for cloning/healing/CAF.

[nrohrbacker]

Nice first post Jon. Good exposure with feather detail and nothing blown. The shadows throw the image off a little, but all in all a nice shot. Keep them coming.

[arash_hazeghi]

nice close up view, the main issue here is the steep angle and the harsh light that has caused shadows on the raptor.

[arash_hazeghi]

welcome to BPN. Nice close up view, the main issue here is the steep angle and the harsh light that has caused shadows on the raptor.

[Jon Rista]

Aye, the shadows definitely throw things off. For a dead tree, this one still had a lot of branches, and the kestrel liked to perch closer to the trunk...so there was always some kind of a shadow. I'm not sure if there is a way to clean that up? I guess one could do a little spot dodging wherever there was a shadow cast by another branch. Sounds like a lot of meticulous work...

Any tips on how to deal with the eye? I don't mind the small catchlight so much, but the reflection irks me just a very tiny bit. It wasn't really visible until I dodged it a little bit, after which it really kind of "pops".

[gail bisson]

Hi Jon,
Welcome to BPN. We are a great community( tooting our own horn here!) and you will learn a ton.
This is a solid first post.
Excellent comments by Arash.
I think the lesson here is to go out shooting a lot earlier for the better light although I am the first to admit that it is hard to stop shooting if good things start to happen.
Re: the reflection. I would just clone it out. I would also try to dodge the tail.
Gail

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome and thanks a ton for your membership support. In addition to too steep with shadows this one is too big in the frame, most likely because of cropping

[Jon Rista]

Thanks Gail and Art. Appreciate the comments. I've reworked the reflection a bit. I'll pull the photo into Photoshop and see if I can eliminate it, or at least make it look better. Thanks for the insight about subject size in frame, Art. I'll pull back a bit. I think that was bothering me too, but I couldn't really put a bead on it.

Is it ok to post updated versions later on in a thread?

[Arthur Morris]

Reposts are welcome.