Kestrel V Red Kite

[John Harper]

Hi There

Shot of a Kestrel having a "discussion" with a Red kite over airspace rights taken at my usual haunt of the Hawk Conservancy Trust in the UK.

The female of the pair of Kestrels is sitting on 5 eggs in a nest box at the moment and the male is fiercely protective of the area around the box.

Alas its pretty much a 100% crop as they were way off in the distance...but I was pleased to get the kites beak open...and i like the difference in relative sizes.

John

EOS 1DMKIII
EF 500mm F4L
ISO 640
1/1600 @ F4

[Gayle Clement]

Outstanding capture, John. The widespread wings of the kestral and the contrast in size are terrific.

[Fabs Forns]

Great action! The heavy crop makes it loose density. Try to duplicating the image and using multiply as a blending more, then adjusting the opacity of the layer till you get good colors and a little more density.
What a catch!

[john crookes]

Even with a heavy crop you did very well with the details
i made a layer with multiply then made a new layer and made the blend on that one to color burn to increase the density even more without graying the whites

I then added a stroke edge the same color as the shoulder of the hawk

opacities of the blend layers were about 20 percent

just a little goes a long ways

[Nikolay Staykov - shotlandetsa]

I would never thought this is nearly 100% crop, as the details and fine and the image does not suffer loss of quality at all!

Great action and moment! Congrats!!!

The slight BG in the repost image of John is a good idea. However the original PP of the birds are spot on, at least on my HW calibrated photo monitor.