Merlin Launch

[Steve Large]

Hi Everyone,
Here is this week's post. I love watching the skill of these little guys down at the marsh. Their main diet at this time of year seems to be dragon flies and they are very adept at launching themselves off of a branch and picking them out of the air.

Camera stats:

Canon 50D, 800ISO, 500mm F/4L, 1/1600 sec at F9, +2/3 EC

Thanks for looking,

Steve

[Ilija Dukovski]

Very nice flight pose and great sharpness and detail, HA and face expression too.
I wish the small branches were not there, at least in the URH part.
I'd try to clean them away.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Loved this take off pose, the eye contact is good, you could clone out the disracting OOF branches....

[Steve Large]

Ilija and Kiran, Thanks for the advise on the branches. Here is the edited version.

Steve

[Kiran Poonacha]

sure looks better Steve... well done. you could knock off the couple of below too..

[Ken Watkins]

Steve,

If creating an image that was not there is within your ethics, I would go the whole hog and remove all of the branches. The big one might prove difficult in particular the rebuilding of the lost wing tip.

Simple instructions of how to do this sort of thing are contained in APTATS-1.

Which is available from this website.

[Erich Stevens]

Hi Steve,

I like your repost. Those twigs in the BG were a distraction. My vote is to leave the other twigs and main branch in cuz this is a launch image, right? Love the eye contact and great EXP. Great work!

[Kathy Reeves]

Great catch on the fast little birds. I would clean the entire BG and fix the wing.

Kathy

[Brian Barcelos]

Steve, I love the re post.I agree with Erich. But it would also look good with just the bird, either way this is a killer image. Eye contact is great as is all the detail in the feathers. The foot trailing adds a lot to this also. Congrats

Brian

[Edward Fisher]

Nice job on cleaning it up Steve. I think it looks much nicer now.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Nice repost and killer eye contact. I would prefer all clean an image, but that's too much digital chainsawing. :D

[Steve Large]

Thanks again for all fo your comments everyone. Thought that I should at least have the lower branches to give the idea of what the Merlin had jumped off of.

Take care,

Steve

[christopher galeski]

magic shot Steve,we have Merlins here in the UK,they hunt and live on our moors,and hunt manly meadow pipits and skylarks,Your shot is nice and sharp,HA,wing position magic,your repost is the one.thanks.