Red-tailed hawk

[Richard Stern]

Flying low over my house, in late afternoon light recently.

D300, 300 F/4 AF-S + 1.4TC, hand-held, ISO560, 1/800. F/6.3.

Some sharpening and noise reduction in pp, and I added a catchlight (hopefully as per Artie's instructions elsewhere on BPN).

Richard

[Dave Blinder]

Nice timing and pose Richard. The head looks grainy and lacking detail. Seems this is either a huge crop, or lighting that was too harsh, an autofocus issue, or some combination of the 3.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the look-down pose and wing position. There seems to be a lack of fine details. Did you run NR on the wings and did you dial in positive EC in-camera?

[Arthur Morris]

Perfect pose and the angled COMP works well but as mentioned above (in part) there are many serious quality issues: over-exposed highlights, noise on the bird, and a very strange-looking eye.