Male Snail Kite Flight in Sweet Light

[Jim Neiger]

Osceola County, FL - 1D2N, 500mm, hand held from boat, 1/1250, F4, ISO 800, manual exposure

This image was made during this morning's session of my Flight School "Fly South with the Birds" workshop.

[Doug Brown]

Awesome Jim! Great wing position and dangling talons. The light is to die for and the BG beautiful.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great golden light, wing position, dangling feet and BG. I also like the fanned tail. If anything I wish the bird would have flown toward you.

[Fabs Forns]

Agree on the sweet light and pose. The whites in the tail are blown, you could select them in Color Range, put them in a layer and use Multiply as blending mode to recoup some detail.

[John Blumenkamp]

Beautiful light and wing position, and this has your usual crisp detail (I gotta take some pointers from you one day). I wonder how it might work with a more vertical crop.

[Jim Neiger]

Agree on the sweet light and pose. The whites in the tail are blown, you could select them in Color Range, put them in a layer and use Multiply as blending mode to recoup some detail.

Fabs,

The whites are all there. On my monitor I can clearly see the edges of the white feathers and I didn't have any blown whites in the raw file or finished product. The only hot spot I had was the catchlight in the eye.

[Fabs Forns]

Fabs,

The whites are all there. On my monitor I can clearly see the edges of the white feathers and I didn't have any blown whites in the raw file or finished product. The only hot spot I had was the catchlight in the eye.

I checked the histogram and there's a spike to the right, Multiplying the whites will not hurt.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I agree with Fabs, in my monitor I also see the whites a bit blown, her suggestion is good, but hey, IMO is a minor detail among such light, pose and detail!!! Congratulaitons!

[Arthur Morris]

I can see detail in the whites here. I love the light and the wings position, wishing only that the bird was angled a bit more towards you. BKGR is killer.

De-SAT-ing the red of the iris and adding some CYAN to it might improve it a bit.