Peregrine Falcon take-off

[Aditya Sridhar]

What an awesome couple of days I had at Durlston Country Park, Swanage! I had the pleasure of watching the resident pair of Peregrine Falcons for around 30-45 mins at sunset. Coming to this image, it was shot with the 500mm PF + 1.4x TC. The bird wasn't far at all, but I was shooting a few close-up portraits when the falcon decided to take-off. Since I didn't have time to detach the TC, I just quickly fired a burst of images and hoped they'd turn out sharp. I clipped the near wing on 1 of the 3 images in the sequence, but I managed to capture this pose so I'm happy In terms of PP, all I did was some basic exposure adjustments, saturation, NR, and sharpening for post. I also applied Nik Tonal Contrast and Detail Extractor at a low opacity. No cloning was done. Although I'm aware that it may improve the final image, I wanted to keep it completely natural.

Camera - Nikon D850
Focal Length - 700mm
Aperture - f/11
Shutter Speed - 1/4000s
ISO - 4000
Handheld
Manual, Auto ISO
Crop - 80-85% of full-frame

All comments and CC are appreciated

EDIT: I'm uploading the newer version of this image that has been processed in C1 and PS, but I'm leaving both versions here for anyone who wants to compare the two I'm still trying to figure out my workflow especially downsizing and sharpening for web use as the file sizes are always too large even after compression. It's either that, or low sharpness and image quality issues. Capture One has certainly been a massive help with regard to the latter.

[kevin Hice]

Nice capture of this Peregrine. Notice it must only be a couple year old bird still has some juvenile feathers not completely molted.Love the intensity of the birds eyes focused and dangling feet. I would have not cloned out the feathers on the feet agree with you. TFS Aditya

[arash_hazeghi]

like the light and the pose, the head is a bit blurry and the wing position could be better

TFS

[John Mack]

Nice light and background. The wing looks sharper than the head. I would be tempted to remove the part of the cliff.

[Aditya Sridhar]

like the light and the pose, the head is a bit blurry and the wing position could be better

TFS

Thanks a lot for the eyes Arash! I totally botched the processing on the image. I finally bit the bullet and purchased C1 and the difference is very noticeable (compounded with the over-processing errors that I made in the OP).

Nice light and background. The wing looks sharper than the head. I would be tempted to remove the part of the cliff.

Thanks for the feedback John. I did consider removing the cliff, but in the end, I decided to leave it in to keep everything natural. I did remove it to see what the image would look like without that bit, but I think the cliff adds to the overall scene.