High-key Turkey Vulture.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I was driving around local country roads in search of Horned Larks or whatever other early migrant I could find when I came across a group of eight Turkey Vultures perched close together on fence posts and a log. As I slowed down all of them but one, luckily this one on the log, flew off. There was an oof tree trunk directly behind its head and it gave me just enough time to reposition the car to place said tree trunk behind the tail area (anything more introduced oof FG stuff in front of the subject), turn off the engine, and take about 30 seconds worth of images before it too flew off. It did not take long afterwards to see why all these vultures were perched together there: a bones-only carcass of what looked like a large dog - perhaps a coyote. BG is snow-covered field.

I drove back there half an hour later to find they had returned but I let them be as I had disturbed them once already...

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/500s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, lens resting on open car window ledge, tree trunk removed via clone tool from behind the subject's tail.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

Nicely exposed with good detail in the darks, excellent angle in frame, interesting perch with some character.

Well seen and captured.

Cheers

Randy

[gary ellwein]

The stately pose and high-key presentation is effective. I like the diagonal lines.

[Satish Ranadive]

Wonderful image.
Very nice high key effect of snow BG. Very nice composition.
Love the frame, Daniel Sir.

Regards,
Satish.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Daniel,

You have made an ugly bird look handsome. The perch goes very well with the vulture

It is interesting because I can see the clone marks in the BG at the places you mention. I'm sure it doesn't show on your screen, but it is interesting to see who else can see it.

TFS

[Iain Barker]

Really nice Daniel. I like the clean look of the image it is almost like its been setup in a studio. I don't see your cleanup on my monitor.

[Doug Brown]

Beautiful frame; bird and perch pop nicely against the white BG. I see strange (? clone) marks on the left half of the frame and in the URC.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Well I will say those clone marks are almost invisible to my eye but I fund them!
Now going back to the image. As stated by Arash, this is not Ken but they certainly play a super important roll in nature. I like the HK idea as I also make use of it with monkeys every once in a while!
You composed this one pretty good.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely shot Dan, because you mentioned it I think I can see some faint marks along the edge of the uppermost tail feather, not for a minute trying to teach you to suck eggs but did you make a selection of the tail, then refine edge, then inverse and then clone - that usually works for me.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys! Interestingly I cannot see those marks on my monitor but I definitely do see them quite well via my ipod. Gotta go clean those up!

[Sandy Witvoet]

Beautiful image.... I don't think these birds are ugly at all... superb in flight, most interesting at rest and a face that actually shows personality. Not a real fan of them in high-key, but your portrayal here is unique with wonderful detail.