Red-tailed Hawk

[Raymond Barlow]

Just a posed shot from Monday am, this bird treated me pretty nicely as I was able to fire over 400 frames at it from different positions, and 2 different perches., always cool to find a young and gorgeous bird (10 minutes from the house too!)

D300 200-400 VR + 1.4 tc @ 550mm
1/160 sec, f6.3, iso 250
handheld from pick up, natural light, slight crop.

Shooting with single sensor, Afs mode, i was able to move the sensor around while composing on the fly, a big advantage with so many sensor positions on the D300.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the soft light, pose, eye contact and BG.

[Brian Barcelos]

Very nice exposure and I like the out of focus ?cat-tails? in lrc, balances the bird nicely. Nice to have a cooperative bird close to home. Congrats

[Randy Stout]

Ray:

Lovely bird, fun to find one you can work with. When I first looked at the image, I thought, too much space on the right. But, because of the brown tones, I do think it acts as a nice balance to the bird, and the overall composition is very nice.

I had my first real close up exposure to a captive redtail this weekend, what a beautiful bird. He was at the same event as the Augur buzzard I posted.

Thanks for sharing this beauty. Hope to see more of this series.

Randy

[Marina Scarr]

You did a great job composing this photograph. Your BG is great as is the angle. For my taste, I think I would try saturating the bird just a little more to makeit pop a little, esp the feet and the eye.

THanks for sharing.

[Doug Brown]

Great light, nice pose, and a beautiful BG. It's great to have an opportunity to work a cooperative subject.

[Marc Mol]

Concur what others have touched on, with a well nailed exposure.

[Dan Bellyk]

I like the composition on this one Ray, thanks for the invite to this forum.


Dan

[denise ippolito]

Composition, pose and details are all very nice. Fantastic BG to go w/ it all.

[Ilija Dukovski]

Great EXP here, nice bird and appropriate perch, I like it!

[Harshad Barve]

excellent pose by bird , lovely compo , expo and killer BG
TFS

[Matt Vosniak]

Excellent capture Ray. Earlier this year I too got lucky and found the most ridiculously cooperative RT Hawk and had a great time for a half hour shooting the bird from about 15 feet away. I really like the compostion on your shot and the lighting is excellent well done.

Matt

[Stu Bowie]

Lovely light, sharp, with good detail. I like the space, but you could still take a bit off, and it would still work.

[Kiran Poonacha]

I loved the extra space, the out of frame interest of the Bird add compliments the space around, congrats...

[Raymond Barlow]

thanks for all the nice comments!

Very nice exposure and I like the out of focus ?cat-tails? in lrc, balances the bird nicely. Nice to have a cooperative bird close to home. Congrats

Sorry bud, but all I can tell you is they are those prickly weeds that goldfinches take the seeds from!!

thanks!

[James Salywoda]

Fantastic Shot Ray! I love the open composition it really sets the mood captured in the image.