Northern Harrier

[Jack Backs]

I haven't been much of a BIF guy, but it's a little slow this time of year. Taken from the window of my vehicle. There's no sneaking up on these birds on foot around here. You have to observe hunting patterns and then park and wait.
A little later in the morning than I would have liked but the light was still decent. Basically full frame, leveled the horizon a little and reposition the bird using background from a different frame. Raw file processed with DxO and then
standard DenoiseAI with remove noise set to 0(It still removes what little noise DxO didn't remove in the background) and enhance sharpness set only to 3. Ordered a Z9 2 minutes after the announcement started...may not make
me a better photographer but it should make BIF a little easier.
Nikon D500, 500mmF4VRII, TC-14EIII
1/3200s, f6.3, iso800

[David Pugsley]

Loving the light and the body and head angle. I might consider removing the green at the bottom edge as well as the green on the left side of the tree stand. The subject itself is killer, but I'm distracted by the aforementioned objects.

[Jack Backs]

See if this is better. I'm partially red-green color blind. It's probably more distracting to you than me.

[David Pugsley]

See if this is better. I'm partially red-green color blind. It's probably more distracting to you than me.

Massive improvement IMO. Thanks for the effort.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Brian Sump]

Jack, well man I should say that this frontal, full splayed view of the female Harrier is quite nice. I would not know what elements of another bkg that you transposed.

Light angle looks just fine to me and the detail is nice from tip to tip. Love the eye contact.

I do think you made a wise choice smoothing out a few of those prominent bkg elements. I would have been tempted to really play with some vibrance and careful color enhancements to really make that bkg pop. There are some sweet greens, pinks and blues in there you could really bring out.

Overall this looks pretty great to me, congrats!

[arash_hazeghi]

super pose of the young bird, light and everything is right on the money, BG could be better. the facial details are a bit lacking, usually we see the nasal feathers, was the raw tack sharp?

Congrats on your new camera, it is going to make a huge difference for BIF finally making Nikon competitive in this genre once again

TFS

[Jack Backs]

Thanks Arash,
The raw wasn't quite tack sharp. I just did a straight size reduction for posting as I've been dinged in the past for over sharpening. This is an uncompressed crop of the post processed face.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks Arash,
The raw wasn't quite tack sharp. I just did a straight size reduction for posting as I've been dinged in the past for over sharpening. This is an uncompressed crop of the post processed face.

Hi Jack, this is pretty sharp I'd say, it is just not large enough in the frame to show those kind of fine details, I am sure you'll soon get one closer!

cheers