I loved most the songbird sessions at Alan Murphy's Texas workshop - but in the afternoons we got to try for hawks at the hawk blind. My favorite there (ok - except for the carnivorous mockingbird/ladderback woodpecker fight) was this Caracara who came in briefly and posed for us. The light was strongly golden by the time he came. I was hoping to catch him in flight so had a really short ss - wish I had traded for more depth of field for some of the pics.
canon 7d, 300mm f/2.8, iso 800, 1/3200 sec at f/5.6, tripod, manual exposure
cropped in LR, with clarity and vibrance upped
background nr with nik define in cs5, and s&H and sharpening of bird. I applied a white point in curves, and am not sure if it lightened the whole bird a bit too much.
Last edited by pat lillich; 02-18-2011 at 11:54 AM.
Lovely pose - HA & catchlight spot on for my liking. Perhaps a bit darker would look better - legs & perch in particular look a bit bright. Also agree with your preference for a bit more DOF. But overall an excellent shot
Pat, beautiful shot, great pose, wonderful detail. My only suggestion is in agreement with Gordon. I would go a bit darker. I would be proud of this one.
Pat
I like this repost more than the original. The shot itself is great (HA, pose, perch). To be constructive (in a nitpicky way) - I find the OOF BG "splodge" to the right of the head a little distracting, you could clone it out?
or leave it in
Nice pose, Pat! I like the legs/perch of the repost and the body/head of the bird in the OP. I also would clone out the one blotch to the side of his head. Simply select the head, inverse the selection and then you can use the clone tool on the blue area to clone over without getting into the head area. Should be an easy fix!
Texas Caracara
