Excellent first post Good looking bird with a clean bg and sharp Light at your back would have illuminated the bird Its seems backlit You could open the shadows a bit but will not look good !!! Also when you find such a good bird stay with him and work it I'm sure he will do something interesting or at least leap and fly away win/win
You could also straighten the horizon with the ruler tool (not familiar let me know)
That is a beautiful bird, looks like a great place to photograph if this is an indication of what you find there.
Al is dead on, the back light is the problem here. If you have no choice and need to make an image with the sun in front of you rather than behind you, a flash is very helpful to brighten up the shadow caused by the back llght.
Hey Mike, nice to have you posting here. As the others have said, the light angle is not ideal. If you were free to move, you might have been able to get to the side where the light would have been falling more directly on the hawk (with fewer shadows to deal with). A good rule of thumb when you are starting out is to try to keep the sun directly behind you as you work a bird. Great looking bird from what sounds like a very rewarding area of the world for bird photography.
Welcome. I hope you enjoy and learn as much from this forum as I have.
Guys, in addition to your other recommendations would it help if he cropped out the barbed wire? It seems to make the entire image lean, yet the post is level.
I wondered about the barbed wire. I like it in the picture but it was not level as you mentioned. I tried to crop it like you suggest but the picture seems to lose its depth with less of the bg.
Savanna hawk - first time post
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