Sharp-shinned Hawk

[Mark Schmitt]

Dumb luck this image was. I had my camers trained out of the kitchen window for images of some of the yard birds (I have a retirement house on the side of a mountain with no one around me except birds) when this little male made an attempt at some of the small paserine birds. It failed, as they do more often than not, but it landed on this perch and well...

Location: Wofford Hts. Kern Co. CA
Weather: summer, late afternoon; 103 deg fahr.

EXIF: Canon 20D; EF 500 IS l @ 4.0
Shooting parameters: 1/400 @ f 5.6; metering mode, evaluative: ISO 200: White bal, manual @ 5400K; Bogen monopod: ambient light.

Work flow: Lightroom, CS2 post process

[James Salywoda]

Sweet pose Mark that bg really sets off this beauty. Excellent detail and pose.

[Glenn Bartley]

Very nice image. The pose and BG are sweet.

[Simon Bennett]

I like the pose, detail and background.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Mark, Thanks for posting this nice image of an adult bird. Please post at 800 pixels wide or tall as it is easier to view and critique them than small JPEGs.

I agree that the pose and the BKGR are sweet but this image has a serious flaw and I am surprised that nobody above mentioned it... With the bird's head cocked back a bit and angled ever-so-slightly away from you, there is little light on the face and the face and eye look dark. Had the bird's head been more forward at the moment of capture the resulting image would have been lot stronger...

For the repost I cropped a bit from the left and the bottom, did a bit of eye doctor work, lightened the face and sharpened it a bit.

[Mark Schmitt]

Hi Mark, Thanks for posting this nice image of an adult bird. Please post at 800 pixels wide or tall as it is easier to view and critique them than small JPEGs.

I agree that the pose and the BKGR are sweet but this image has a serious flaw and I am surprised that nobody above mentioned it... With the bird's head cocked back a bit and angled ever-so-slightly away from you, there is little light on the face and the face and eye look dark. Had the bird's head been more forward at the moment of capture the resulting image would have been lot stronger...

For the repost I cropped a bit from the left and the bottom, did a bit of eye doctor work, lightened the face and sharpened it a bit.

Thanks for the critique: I thought about cropping as you suggested but I added more cavas to the right to open up a bit more: as to the face, I had already done some selective dodging to bring up the tones and brighten the eye, I didn't want to over brighten the highlight in the eye. But the re-post loods good so perhaps I should have done a bit more. Will begin uploading at the larger dimensions suggested. Thanks again I welcome all suggestions: it's how we learn.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The thing I can speculate from your original post here is that you dodged the WHOLE eye, when you should have done the iris only and left the pupil alone. I agree about the head angle, but overall I like this alot.

P.S. I think I see some cloning marks in the BG where the bird meets the perch?

[Ted Willcox]

Stunning! What a fortunate image to have come to you. I like the repost. Well done
Ted