Here's Looking at You

[Paul Lagasi]

Today was a beautiful fall day...lots of movement of birds...in one field I found this Harrier. Up here, when one of these birds sees humans, they usually go the other way....I had no time to remove my 1.7TC as it flew closer and closer. I find my 300 2.8 with teleconverter, a little soft when handheld
Luckily, I had set my D300 to shoot in Raw and JPEG, so I can compare....I'd mostly used JPEG before.
I have to admit not bad, when I converted using camera raw to do my changes.
Maybe a little to centred?

D300
300 2.8 w 1.7x
f4.8
1/2000
iso-400
EC +0.3
A.P.
cropped to 25% of original
handheld

[Paul Randall]

Agree it looks a little too centred but the sharpness is there. The eye contact adds to this image as well.
Well done Paul.

[Tony Whitehead]

Nice pose and eye contact, Paul. Being only 25% of the original is hurting it a bit with some loss of detail. ARW is definitely the way to go to extract the most from your images.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the incoming pose, eye contact and BG. I don't find it too centered but would try to lighten the left wing tip.

[Harshad Barve]

lovely pose and BG, lovely eye contact
TFS

[Arthur Morris]

Tony did you mean ARW or RAW? IAC, the image could benefit from selective sharpening of the bird.... Great pose and eye contact.

[Michel Pilon]

Hello Paul,

The fact that the bird is looking directly at you make your quite centered composition acceptable for me. It is true also that the important crop causes some details to be removed... But I like your bg and the eye contact is very impressive!!!

Thanks for sharing!

Michel

Michel Pilon (Photographe-Naturaliste)
Quebec, Canada

[Paul Lagasi]

Thank You All for your comments and suggestions, I'll try and rework this image....