Male Snail Kite eye contact...

[Dan O'Leary]

Another from the Neiger pontoon boat. I kept a lot less images of the males. There were less of them and the plumage just doesn't light up like the female's.

2008:05:03 08:20:40
1dm3 with 100-400mm @ 400mm
Manually set at 1/2000 sec, f/7.1, ISO 800

[Alfred Forns]

Excellent pose Dan !!! Like the eye contact very much Good exposure and very sharp !!!! Might be able to increase contrast just a bit? Like it a lot as presented !!!!!

[Arthur Morris]

Sharp and a nice pose. Adding some black to the blacks and the mid-tones (via a Selective Color ADJ) would give this more punch w/o increasing the overall contrast.

[George DeCamp]

Really nice action image. The wings and tail in this position show nice detail and really show off the bird.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Really like the pose and the incredible action you captured here Dan. Awesome timing !!!

[Blake Shadle]

You've been making some great images out with Jimmy! Love the pose and the eye contact. I agree about the contrast. I took this image into PhotoShop and made Artie's recommended adjustment, and it looks great!!

[Dan O'Leary]

Thank you all for taking the time to provide constructive and supportive feedback. I noticed before posting that the image looked much flatter as a jpg than I expected, but had no time or energy to pump it up. Funny that you all jumped right on that. :o

I always start out with Artie's photoshop best practices - levels, slight contrast boost with curves, slight sat boost and, finally, a tiny boost to the blacks in blacks and neutrals. In this case I also desaturated and lightened the yellows a touch.

I have found that I tend to overdo the contrast, so I am super sensitive to that. In the case of this image I reduced the opacity of the curves adjustment layer by about 40% to tone it down some. Apparently that was too much.

For this repost I bumped up the curves layer a bit, added a bit more punch to the blacks and neutrals and lightened the eye a touch. I think the result is a solid improvement.

[Arthur Morris]

Better, and thanks for the kind words. It still looks too light overall to me. Try this: open a Hue/Sat box and move the lightness slider 2-4 points to the left to make the image darker overall. (I much prefer using that than the middle-tone slider in Levels. That tip will be in the next Digital Basics update.)

[Dan O'Leary]

Here it is with -4 lightness. Better, I agree.