Adult Red-shouldred Hawk

[Duane Noblick]

My first encounter with an adult RS Hawk..it lasted about 30 seconds before it flew to a higher perch. Photographed yesterday under less than ideal lighting conditions (overcast skies). 3 story brick building as the background and taken from my work truck.

Canon 7D, 500mm f/4L, 1/500" @ f/5.6, ISO 400, handheld, full frame

I removed a small branch going across it's upper back and some branches in the lower right of the frame. There are a few things I wish I could change or do over in this image but for a first encounter I'll take this one for now.

[Randy Stout]

Duane:

Nice first capture of this bird for you. It pays to be prepared!

The building gave you a very nice BG for this bird.

Excellent head position, sharp.
Nice scale to perch.

I might be tempted to tone down the brighter spots , LUC, probably fill in a bit with the red color to even it out.

Cheers

Randy

[Nicki Gwynn Jones]

Duane, lovely pose captured and the head turn is the icing on the cake. I love the colour of the BG!

[Pieter de Waal]

I agree Duane nice image with a lovely pose and great HA. Like the nicely defined feather pattern and the OOF branches in the BG. Good PS work on the branch and agree with Randy re the bright areas.

[Duane Noblick]

Thank you everyone.

Randy...you pointed out exactly what bothered me about this image....the bright spots (main problem) and the oof branches intersecting it's head. I like to do as little as possible to my images (removing the branch along the back was something I did for the first time just to see if I could do it) and I did try to remove the white spots and oof branches but the head looked cut out. I'm not at that level yet in Photoshop but over the last year or so the one thing I've learned is patience and I know I will get another opportunity with this species of Hawk and I will leanr a lot from this image and suggestions I receive when I post them for critique.