Dog-fight at Giant's Castle

[philperry]

At the considerable risk of appearing woefully inadequate in the light of the two previous IOTY winners, here is an offering from my recent three day stint at Giant's Castle.

While I had no luck with bearded vultures landing in front of the vulture hide, I did manage a shot of a whitenecked raven chasing a bearded vulture. At this point in the confrontation the vulture has had enough and is turning its head and extending its feet to ward off the raven.




Technical Details: Canon EOS 7D ; 400 f4 IS DO + 1.4x ; Mongoose mounted on Benbo tripod ; 1/1600th @ f5.6 ; ISO 400 ;

[Randy Stout]

Phil:
Dramatic action, tells the story well.
Like the size differential, raven must be very determined to take on the vulture.

There is some noise creeping into the BG. I might consider a tighter crop to really emphasize the fight.
Perhaps some shadow work to see if more detail can be extracted from the raven and the head of the vulture.

Cheers

Randy

[Fabs Forns]

Totally agree with Randy's comments. You were lucky to even witness the behavior, let alone document it!

[Tony Whitehead]

Dramatic behavioral capture, Phil. Technically it already looks like a significant crop.

[philperry]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

The crop is already around 50% of the frame so I cannot crop much more. Agreed I will need to work on the background noise and getting a bit more detail in the raven.