Ready for lift off

[Lance Peters]

Well weekend is over already - tough one for photo's not a lot of opportunities.

Grabbed this one - light angle is not great - but love the action and the BG.
I am going to have to start going to Gym - this was taken with the sigmonster - HANDHELD. (many shots this weekend were - birds were very skitish - tripod just freaked them out)

D3
Sigmonster 300-800 zoom @ 800mm
F5.6
1/1250 th
200 ISO
0EV

Added .3 exposure comp in P.S. - Shrapened and cropped a tad from the RHS. Otherwise as shot.

Comments welcome as always.

[Gus Cobos]

Nicely done Lance...I like that pre flight take off...:cool:

[Cheryl Flory]

love the pose and feeling of energy in this image! Too bad the head is very slightly turned away and the the lighting was so harsh. Would a density filter help in situations like this?

(if _this_ is what you get when there is not a lot of photo opportunities around, then all I can say is WOW! what I get when few opportunities are around is toads. ewww. lol...

I very much enjoy this pose. thanks for submitting it.

[Gus Hallgren]

Hi Lance: Beautiful capture. I like everything about it. Well done, looking forward to more . . . Uncle Gus

[Doug Brown]

It's a great pose and perch; the bird looks like it's taking off from the top of the world. Head angle isn't ideal, but I think the good look at the eye makes up for it. Hand holding at 800mm without IS is pretty impressive Lance! With whites so hot, why did you add EC onto the image?

[Oscar Zangroniz]

Great capture my friend. Very well placed in the frame, background very good, bird sharp, only thing IMO is a little tight on top.
Time to go to work in your part of the world.
Regards as always,

[Alberto Oria]

Very nice Lance everything was cover on the previous comments

[Harold Davis]

love the pose!! too bad about the light. would have been a show stopper for sure with the light coming from the right angles!!

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Hi Lance,
I reckon that you must already have some muscles stashed away somewhere...handholding all that glass!!!!
Really love the image - all points covered above.
Regards,
Nicki

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Like the anticipated take off. Lighting a little harsh maybe. Pretty good on the whole:)

[Desmond Chan]

Everything covered. What a pity about the blown highlights though. Great job, Lance !!

[Lance Peters]

Heres another attempt, the whites dont appear to be blown in the original - That said I have pushed them right to the edge.

So more carefully processed in P.S. - Did some selctive S/H on the shadow area's. Did some Multiply on the bright area's to tone them done a bit.

Any better??

[Anita Rakestraw]

I think you did a good job on the re-processing, Lance, something right in between might be perfect! There is a little burning into the sky to remove, in between the wing and neck. My monitor seems to display a bit on the dark side, but from what I see, I might selectively lighten back up the bird except for the areas that were blown. And maybe the vegetation too.

[Alfred Forns]

Great thread !!! Agree with suggestion and great re post Lance !!

One suggestion for you Sigmonster ..... save the money you would spend on the gym and with it buy a monopod !!! The largest Gitzo will work very well if you combine it with the right head !!! On the Really Right Stuff website they have a great suggestion for a head ... and its inexpensive !!!

[Doug Brown]

Really Right Stuff just came out with their own heavy duty monopod head. It's quite good.

[Lance Peters]

Hey Doug - yes Just ordered one - will let you know what I think.

Did you get the file OK?

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Let us all know will you?
TX

[Lance Peters]

hi Jackie - yep surely will.:)