Red-tailed Hawk

[arash_hazeghi]

Canon 50D 400mm f/5.6, f/7.1 1/1600sec ISO 400 SW:LR2.3 + PS (adjusted highlight/shadow and crop) location: Palo Alto, CA

Light was harsh but I got some nice feather detail.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Tough lighting conditions. The harsh light coming from almost directly above has made it impossible to light up the face and body properly. I would be tempted to lighten the subject even more (if it doesn't introduce too much colour noise) as the shadow it is in makes it seem darker than it should. Nice gliding pose, with the curled primaries on far wing adding a bit of interest.

[Kobus Tollig]

Ditto Daniel here. I do think you did well in the conditions

[Arthur Morris]

Arash, Did you replace the original post? Dan's comments do not fit with what I am looking at.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Arthur, No I didn't replace it since this was as good as I could get it in PS, I figured it wasn't worth more work...any suggestions?

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Arash, That said, I will, for probably the first time ever, disagree with Dan who suggested "lightening the subject even more." It already looks muddy from being lightened too much---to much Shadow Adj.

I do like the pose and the head angle. Can you post a JPEG that represents the ORIG capture (which I suspect is grossly under-EXPed. Convert is without any adjustments and make an 800 jpeg from that.