My wife and I were driving up Madera Canyon to go hiking when at the 5 mile post we saw this Adult Red-tailed Hawk about 150 feet from the road perched on a branch in the sun at approximently 10 AM. Had my wife's Olympus SP550 UZ Digicam 18x Optical (Approx 500mm Equiv) set to full Tele, Program Mode, 200 ISO, minus .03 EV, High quality at Auto Exposure, Auto WB. Hand held, but elbows braced on roof. Even at small dimensions 544 px long side, I had to save as Web in CS3 and reduce quality for posting here.
Great find You did very well with the setup It produce a good sharp image well exposed Do have a couple of suggestions The light was coming from the right side of the bird causing the left to be in shadow While trying to revive in PS a halo was introduced around the bird S/H will do so
You can select the the blue Inverse the selection and with quick mask brush away the leaves Will end with just the bird Contract a couple of pixels and the halo will not be there Much rather get on sun angle
One other thing I would do is crop a bit different would like the bird more on the lower left corner When you get ready to downsize Use bicubic sharper It will give you better results downsizing They will look fine Look at the images in Artie's newsletters All are at 45 kb Amazing !!!!
Gus,
Nice capture and Welcome to BPN.
I really like the compsition. The body shadow does not bother me, because the Hawk's head is turned towards you.
I also like the placement in the frame of your subject.
Did you have to make this brighter in PS? It looks a little noisy, noise can be caused by using brightness and contrast controls in PS.
Rather than -.33 I feel +.33 would be the right call based on the scene tonality.
That is a 2/3 difference.
James
Thank you for your comments - yes, I think I used Shadow/Highlights to brighten up the photo, and yes I can now see the noise in the sky. I appreciate the tip about contrast & brightness and will be real carefull of that in the future as I have never really been able to remove noise succesfully with Noise removal in Photoshop or other programs. Have always thought of -EV with bright sun, and will definity erxperiment with your suggestion as we get the most incident sunshine in the U.S.
Red-tailed Hawk
