Young Black Shouldered Kite in flight

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Taken with a Canon 30D on the 8th Jan 2008 at the Edithvale Wetlands, Melbourne Australia, Late afternoon using a Canon 300mm F4 L with Canon 1.4 converter (420mm) X 1.6 crop, RAW format 1/800 sec F10. iso 400. Sharpened in CS3 and cropped at 66%.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Welcome to BPN! Very nice wing position. I wish the angle were less steep so the right wing wouldn't cover part of the head. I would apply some NR since the image has some noise. The bird is a bit too centered for my taste. I would give him more space to fly into. Keep them coming.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Axel, great to be on a site with folk who have the experience and generosity to help us enthusiastic but poorly educated photographers.

I will value all advice greatly.

Thanks again I may revisit my saved original RAW file and try some mods and post again.

[Milo Burcham]

Although it is great the eye shows so well, wing position could be better. I also see the noise.. possibly from the crop?

[Nicole Brooker]

Hi Chris. I suspect the noise is from the crop. It's a shame that the position of the wing slightly covers the head. Otherwise the wing position is nice. Denise and I are going to Werribee in a couple of weeks so hopefully we get some nice raptor photo opportunities.

[Glenn Bartley]

Welcome to BPN. I think the main issue here is the wing position covering the birds head. In terms of post processing this is a good image to apply selective noise removal on just the BG.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thank you all for your advice.

I am VERY new to noise reduction techniques and have just purchased Noise Ninja and installed the 30D profiles, now to the hard bit.

Understanding the instructions.

Hi Nicole, I am off to the Seaford Wetlands today for a change of location.