Cooper's Hawk 2

[Brian Barcelos]

Here is the same Coop as from my last post. A man walking close by with his Pekingese scared her over a few trees. I followed her cautiously and was able to get pretty close again but she was higher up thus the steeper angle here. The BG was littered with branches all over and I had to do some extensive pruning on this one. The BG was so white I had to add the black border, sorry. All C/C appreciated, Thanks for looking.

Canon EOS 50D
Aperture-Priority AE
Tv 1/320
Av 9.0
Evaluative Metering
Exposure Comp +1
ISO Speed 500
Tamron 200-500mm
Focal Length 500mm
Hand Held

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

beautiful composition,pose,eye contact!!!

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Brian, I prefer this one to your previous post. I like the intense stare, good feather detail, and I would maybe crop in a bit from the right.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Steepish angle, as mentioned by yourself...but I like it very much. Good composition, was this a vertical original? On my monitor there are very slight traces of "purple fringing" along the bottom edge of the perch. For web presentation I'm OK with thin black borders anytime - as opposed to the thick black ones.

[Ilija Dukovski]

I like it. The pose is good and the branch appropriate, you did very well with the BG.
I don't mind the frame either. Good one.

[Brian Barcelos]

Thanks for the comments.

Dan, The purple fringing I believe is due to the quality of my lens. I did tone it down in some spots that were worse. I usually see it more on images taken on overcast days for some reason. This was actually a horizontal originally.

This is original straight from camera converted to jpeg only...

[Ilija Dukovski]

Oh man, good work...

[Mike Milicia]

Nice pose and detail!

Image looks a bit flat.
Here's a repost with a contrast boost using curves as well as a midtone contrast adjustment with USM (10, 50, 0).
Bird looked a bit on the dark after the adjustments so also did a small midtone adjustment in Levels to brighten it a bit.
I'm sure you'll get better results working on the master file but just wanted to give you an idea of what I'm suggesting.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the high-key, alert pose and you did a good job on removing all the stuff around the bird. I like the idea of boosting contrast.

[Harshad Barve]

Very well done here considering FF posted by you , lovely H/K effect and added contrast looks good here
TFS

[Kiran Poonacha]

Boost woeks well, loved the image Bhai, nice details, ha and good job on the cleaning, congrats..

[James Salywoda]

I love the high key bg the Coopers Hawk reallly stands out nicely from it... Excellent Shot!

[Glenda Simmons]

You did an outstanding job on removing all the clutter. The detail on the bird is great. I know most everyone always wants the non-clutter look, but how often do we actually see this in the real world. Especially with Cooper's...they're hiding in all that clutter, stalking their prey. I think this would have still been a nice image showing the bird in it's natural habitat, obviously cropping out some of the branches, especially the twig close to it's head, but there is a naturally curved branch above the head that would have made a nice natural frame, and the colors of the orange foilage below the bird, would have added some nice contrast color. My two cents worth, but you did a great job!

[scott benson]

lovely shot.