Black kites

[Jonathan Ashton]

Vehicle used as a hide (blind), bean bag Canon 7D Canon 500mm f4 L IS ISO 400 1/1250 sec f7.1

We were on a sandy patch by a mangrove swamp, the 4 wheel drive got stuck so I said to the driver just stick it in 4WD and if there is a problem we can shove to help. I should have course remembered that when we asked for a 4WD vehicle that we should have said quite explicitly that we expect the 4WD system to work!! It didn't of course so we spent about an hour digging and pushing and eventually a 4WD that did work was sent to pull us out. All was not lost shortly afterwards some black kites came down and started playing with this branch we initially thought it may have been for nest building purposes but in the end we thought they were merely fighting for possession.

I would appreciate your comments on the image as presented but I feel honour bound to say I have made some modifications - I will tell you more later!

[Satish Ranadive]

Jonathan:
This is absolutely superb image with great IQ.Excellent moment captured.
Love the playful poses of kites with nice wing positions,steak in the beak,raised foot,inquisitive expression of kite on RHS.
I like the way BG is merging smoothly with FG and it's colors are very well complimenting with kite's colors.Great details.
Beautiful panorama crop composition.

Regards,
Satish.

[gail bisson]

Hi Jonathan,
You got great interaction here and the pose of the right hand kite is beautiful. The foot up and wings up pose are stunning.
I see you extended canvas and repaired a wingtip on the left. I would blend the seam to make it disappear.
There is a hazyness to the left hand kites wing. Did you do something there?It looks like an OOF branch may have overlaid the wing.
I would lighten the left kites face and clone out the little white blob under the wing.
Gail

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Lovely interaction captured here Jon. The light is great and I love the earthy tones.
There's another spare stick on the ground. Wonder why the other kite couldn't just get that instead of fighting over the one the other has :)
Canvas extension visible, but easily fixable. Nice work Jon.

[Randy Stout]

Jon:

Neat interaction, strong sense of the habitat they occupy.

Agree about cleaning up your canvas extension a bit. Go points by Gail.


Cheers

Randy

[Arno Ellmer]

Great interactive image ,Jonathan ! Small pp flaws mentioned easily fixable.Would darken the bot rhand sand a bit.To me it is a bit distracting.
It appears that one gets great shots when ordering 4WD vehicles that don't work ! Will try it next time !

[Sachin Saraf]

Jon you really captured very nice interaction here and nice low angle...issue with canvas can be fixed easily...

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice interaction!

[Uri First]

beautiful image

[PhilCook]

Can see why you decided to add canvas, visible extension, but it certainly would of improved the original composition, both birds balancing the frame nicely now. Interesting interaction with a stick, not what one would expect from a raptor....you should;d get bogged more often hehehe

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks very much everyone, you know it's odd I made the image presented in pane 1 several times because I wasn't happy with the centre, this time I was and I completely overlooked the left hand side which several of you pointed out. As soon as I read the comments I looked and immediately saw the flaw!
I now attach the two images from which the first image i.e. pane 1 was composed. Strangely enough the exif data shows the same time and they are numerically consecutive images, yet the stick is missing in one of the images. I remember panning with the kite coming in from the right and the kite on the left reacting , and I can remember kicking myself that I was not quick enough to focus lock and recompose to get the two birds in the frame properly. By the time I did recompose and focus lock the bird on the left had the stick.

[Gerald Kelberg]

Hi Jon,

If you are going to re-work this, I would suggest adjusting the white balance so that the two parts of the composite have the same/closer tonal values. It was obvious in the OP but more so in the RP above. Looks like you were having a lot of fun!

Regards,

Gerald

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks Gerald, the pane 11 is just the raw converted to the jpeg for web, having said that I agree with your suggestion - I did adjust the exposure etc but I can't remember exactly what I did about the white balance.

[David Salem]

Very nice interaction shot Joanathan. Like all of it and the techs look great too. Fun story too. Well done