White-tailed kite

[arash_hazeghi]

This image is from several years when we had an active colony of WTK's in Half Moon Bay, CA. I was lucky enough to have a flexible schedule at the time that allowed me to photograph these guys at their peak. Since then I have not seen an active colony in the area, just lone and very skittish birds. Hope you like it



1D4 600II + 1.4XIII. ISO 640 f/5.6 at 1/3200sec. hand held, processed with DPP 4.6

[Tim Foltz]

Arash sweet shot love the IQ, BG, catchlight and wing position, maybe just a bit higher in the frame for my tastes, but no biggie.

-Tim

[sasan nejadi]

very very nice landing , light and detail and eye contact is excellent , angle take image is very good ,It was better homogeneous that black and light spots in background .....TFS

[Mike Hitchen]

All the elements came together for this one! Fantastic!

[Ian McLachlan]

Arash.
I remember these shots, the whites blew me away.This one is still on one of your albums and it is superb. 2 Questions please ; Has reprocessing it in DPP 4.6 improved it?, and in what way. And secondly were the best of them morning or evening shots as I am having plenty of trouble with the evening light overdoing any tinge of colour in for example Kestrels.

[Ashkan Ojaghi]

Hi Arash,
Very nice wing position and head angle. Details are superb and I like the soft light. Frankly, I like the composition on the version you have on your facebook page more with a less tight crop and more room on the right for the perch.
Cheers

[Doug Brown]

Great pose, perfect whites and excellent sharpness. A shame about the number of Kites.

[John Mack]

Nice light on the bird with good detail as well.

[Bill Dix]

I remember others from this series, and this is equally outstanding. Light, landing pose, detail all wonderful. Thanks for sharing it. Good thing for us that you got some when they were around and you were available.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks everyone

Ian, the last time I had processed this photo it was with DPP 3.x, now DPP4.6 has much improved, of course it won't show in small web size posted here but at 4000 pixels wide you can see the difference. This was evening light, if you use DPP you should have 0 problem producing nice warm but pure colors with no cast

hope this helps

[gail bisson]

I remember this series very well.
Love the light and the IQ of the whites is spectacular,
Gail

[David Salem]

What a great series of shots you got that season. As you know, the stars may never lineup like this again so be thankful that you had this awesome opportunity to get these fantastic images. I hope sometime in our lives we get an opportunity like this again.
As is true with most nature photography, you need to get the shot while the shot is at it's peak, otherwise when you come back to mop up the next week, they are gone!! Everything looks great on this one, especially the nice evening light!!

[Ian McLachlan]

Thanks for reply Arash.