Osprey Dining

[Peter Farrell]

My wife and I were observing an Osprey nest when the male(?) returned with the afternoon meal.
The fish was quite alive for awhile so it was quite entertaining watching the bird keeping it's balance while trying to get a bite. Also his attentiveness to his meal allowed us to get pretty close to him.
Sony A700, 70-400G, f5.6, 1/250, iso400, ec +1.0, partly cloudy, on monopod. PP in PSE 8, cropped to 30% of FF, adjust levels and slight sharpening. I cloned out a branch crossing the birds right wing tips, so I had to add a porton of the wing tips back. I also cloned out a dead branch in the lower right corner. I tried a crop without the pine tree, but liked this comp better.

[Julie Brown]

Peter, I think you did a good job on this. HA, eye contact, wings up. Cloning looks good too.

Great action shot. How fun for you two that you could watch this!:D

[Lance Peters]

Hi Peter - Love the wings up ose - good HA and eye contact and the prey is a added bonus.
Exposure looks good - think you could probably coax some more detail out of the bird with some careful sharpening.
For my tastes I think I would remove the tree on the LHS.
Good show :)

[Desmond Chan]

Agree to more sharpening. I'm guessing it has something to do with the shutter speed used.

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice shot Peter, love the wing position and pose! Agree it is a bit soft I agree with Lance about letting the tree go.

[Peter Farrell]

Thank you all for commenting. Very unusual for me to be accused of UNDER sharpening:)
Here is another try, obvious cloning. I used USM (R=1.5 100%) on the Osprey's wings, lower body, legs, also on perch and fish. I felt the head and chest were sharpened enough.

[Myer Bornstein]

The repost is to me excellent, nice lo0ok at the osprey

[Bob Miller]

Hi Pete...Although both are very nice....I think I like your original post better. I like the way the tree help to frame your subject. I also like the sharpening better in your repost. This is a great shot ! You also have some spots to clean up in the ULC

[Desmond Chan]

Just want to add that some of the white areas are blown. If you want to, you could try adjusting the "exposure" and "recovery" during post-processing and see if you like the results.

[Alfred Forns]

Great thread and comments !!!

... Peter that looks like a female !!! Excellent image ... btw they always start out with the head !!

[Mark Young]

G'day Peter,

Love the pose of this bird. I like the composition of the repost with the tree cloned out.

The issue with the repost, as was pointed out by bob, is that the bg needs some TLC.
I hope I haven't covered ground you are already aware of, but what I've done in the area around the fish, tree and where the tree trunk used to be, was to use a combination of cloning and using the spot healing brush to merge the 2 tones of blue and make them look less 'blotchy'.