Juvenile Pale Chanting Goshawk

[Morkel Erasmus]

We found this chap feeding on a snake in the shade of a tree on the ground next to the road in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park in South Africa during our trip in September 2009.

I like the detail in this - especially given that the bird was in the shade and the BG brightly lit. You can actually see our car reflected in its eyes...:)

All feedback welcome!

Techs:
Canon 40D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 400mm
f5.6 @ 1/500 SS @ ISO-400
Exp +0.7
I blended in some OOF twigs in the BG

[Randy Stout]

Morkel:

Sharp, nice detail as mentioned. Great reflection in the eye.

It is a challenge when the background is so bright compared to the subject. A bit of fill flash would have been nice if allowed.

Randy

[Fabs Forns]

A crop from behind the bach would come handy and I see an orange color cast in the whole image.
I put the gray eyedropper in Curves on hid midtone gray to take care of the cast.

[Dave Leroy]

Nice and sharp and hard to beat the eye contact. Front lighting would have been great on this one.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for the repost Fabs and the comments Dave and Randy...

I have shots where I used fill flash but that blew out the BG - will maybe do one of my HDR-ish thingys :)

the Kalahari really gives off that strong slightly orange light, so I don't know if the repost reminds me of how it really looked, might be somewhere between the two...:)