Hooded Gladiator

[Rob T Smith]

This Hooded Vulture patiently waited his turn to feast on the remains of a lion kill of a Waterbuck in the Kruger National Park on a misty Winter morning. His pose and slightly fluffed feathers provided a texture which reminds me of the protective clothing worn by Roman gladiators.

Nikon D3S with a Sigma 50-500mm lens; 1/400 at f11; ISO of 500 & a focal length of 420mm. Very little conversion done in Lightroom & sharpened with Morkel Erasmus' sharpening preset in Photoshop.

[Randy Stout]

Rob:

Nice 3D effect from the lighting.

Like the negative space to left, but perhaps not quite as much.

THe whites aren't showing much detail in some areas, appear over exposed.

THe head could stand a bit more sharpening to my eye.

I like the overall feel, colour palette.

Be sure to comment on other folks images as well, good way to learn and support the BPN community.

Cheers

Randy

[Ishmeet Sahni]

Rob, I agree with Randy. A little negative space can be removed and I feel
the subject is under sharpened at least for my monitor. Nice lighting though.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I see what you mean by the "protective clothing worn by Roman gladiators"...neat! I imagine this was a mid-preen head lift? Good critique by Randy which I agree with.

[Rob T Smith]

Many thanks Randy, Ishmeet and Daniel for your constructive comments. I've cropped the image as suggested and did some sharpening in Photoshop (need to learn much more about this). Checked the histogram for possible loss of detail in the whites but it shows that they are far from being pure white. Must be another reason perhaps? I think he looks much better now - after all, weren't most gladiators male? Thanks, once again.

P.s. will certainly try to offer constructive comments to other photos as well, Randy. A question of not making any until I can make credible ones which are over and above the run of the mill, superficial ones.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Rob, even with a web size image imported into LR, there is truck loads you can still extract, so what you have captured in your RAW file will be really good. You can selectively target specific areas in LR/ACR so I am sure you will recover the chest feather issues. I might also just add a slight curves adjustment to give a tad more definition. Using the download sharpening action is fine if it works for you, but I would look also at other ways so you can be specific rather than applying things globally. Randy provided an excellent platform in his critique to really push this image to where it needs to be.

If Avian is what you like to shoot then you have come to the right place.

TFS
Steve

[christopher galeski]

very nice image,like the comp,your repost and Steve's,are the one's.