Red necked falcon.

[prasanna av]

Image taken on a cloudy day.
Nikon D4, Nikkor 600mm +1.4 TC.
ISO 1250, 1/1000, f8, Exp bias -1 .
Cropped for composition, Sharpened and NR on BG.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I've never seen a Red necked falcon and I've seen a lot of red necks my way LOL. What a cool looking guy. I really like the setting here and the nice light. His eye almost looks hollow from this angle. I only wish for a slight head turn toward us

[Robert Kimbrell]

Nice looking Falcon, love the green b/g, and comp looks good, I wish for better light on his eye.

[Randy Stout]

Prasanna:

Lovely environment, colors, bird. Lack of significant catchlight does create the 'dead' eye look. It seems that there is a tiny bit of a catchlight that might be brought up more in post.

There is still a bit of noise in the BG, which is unexpected with the D4 at this ISO. Perhaps the exposure was raised in post?

There is also a dust bunny in the extreme left upper corner.

Lovely bird!

Cheers

Randy

[arash_hazeghi]

Randy hit all the points above. it also seems a bit over-saturated on my screen but such a handsome raptor.

[Andrew Merwin]

Good comments above. Additionally, I like the color blend between the bird's head & the rock perch.

[Markus Jais]

Beautiful bird. Saw them in India and South Africa (may now be considered to be two species).
I like the clean background and the composition. colors look good to me.

Markus

[Loi Nguyen]

Never seen a red necked falcon before either. This is a cool looking dude in a beautiful setting. You have good advice above. I just wonder how large a crop as I would expect to see more details on the red neck and the white. Loi

[PhilCook]

Liking the composition on the rock, all fits in the frame nicely I think, any chance of adding more light to the eye ? Sweet and colorful looking bird, maybe a slightly overdone color saturation.

[David Salem]

Nice looking shot of this unique falcon. Like it all! We used to import these to the US for falconry in the mid 70s. They were called Red-headed Merlins but they arent really Merlins. Thanks for posting this one.