buzzards

[Giovanni Frescura]

Hello
I would like your help about this shoot. This is my opinion.
I am not sure that it is corret ; too much noise, some dominant color, no right details.
Which you think about? Could be interesting spend more time or not ?
Second question about composition .
Is right so or could better vertical or square cut (I not like both very much)
Thanks

Canon 1D Mark IV
Canon 500 is
f.4
iso 2500
1/600

[Marina Scarr]

Terrific action you captured here. I am still seeing a little bit of noise here and there but looks easy to remove. I think you did well at ISO 2500. I would crop a little differently to give more focus to this great behavior/action. I see a little bit of a magenta cast which I removed with a color balance layer, although I am not sure the colors are still right. I think your background (BG) could use some more NR. Great job on getting both heads/eyes in this image.

[Jeannean Ryman]

Agree with Marina's assessment and think the repost brings focus to the birds. Nice job!

[Kerry Perkins]

Giovanni, I agree with Marina's thoughts on composition - her repost brings the eye back over to the birds. I don't think the negative space on the left is doing anything for the image. I also see a color cast to the image, very red/blue to my eye. Here's another attempt at a color balance layer adjustment. I went a little farther with the blue and green. As it turns out, brown is a pretty difficult color to render properly. My secret tip is to Google the subject bird and look at the images. Some are very good and some are not so good. Find the ones that look natural to your eye and adjust your color balance accordingly. Very nice job on the capture - great action and head angles for both.

[Giovanni Frescura]

thanks a lot
what you means : My secret tip is to Google the subject bird and look at the images

[shane shacaluga]

Ciao Giovanni

I believe he means to look for images of the same bird on google or any search engine, and then adjust the colours on the bird to match those you find.

Bella cattura ;)

[Faraaz Abdool]

Giovanni - lovely shot of these birds mid-action! Great job getting both faces in the shot with good HA's. The colour cast in this image is rather difficult. Good advice from the others above.

[Kerry Perkins]

I believe he means to look for images of the same bird on google or any search engine, and then adjust the colours on the bird to match those you find.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hello Giovanni,

Sorry for the delay in replying to you. I didn't save your image as a PS file, so I went back and tried to reproduce what I had done. I believe this is very close, so you can see what adjustments I made. I'm not suggesting that this is a perfect fix, it would be far better to adjust in Lightroom, but it is much closer to the correct colors I believe. As you can see, it is not a simple process and requires different adjustments for highlights, midtones, and shadows. I have many years of experience in color-balancing images for broadcast and film so this is not something that is learned easily. Better to get the right balance in the camera when possible, then to use Lightroom or ACR if necessary. It is very difficult to do much once the image is converted to JPEG and web color space.

[Jim Thomas]

Very exciting pose! Is this courtship or fighting? Background does seem noisy. Not sure of tech terms but some noise is speckly and other noise is like textured glass over the background. This looks like the latter type.

[Giovanni Frescura]

fighting