Red-Shouldered Hawk

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, everyone. I spend most of my time at OOTB but I've been working on improving my base images (filtering does cover a multitude of sins) and I'll be posting here also with that in mind. I took this image this winter at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park near my house. This was one of a pair who spent the afternoon hanging out close to the boardwalk. I removed a few sticks with content aware in CS5, NR on the bg, selective sharpening.
Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Canon 7D, Canon 100-400L, 1/800 sec., f/5.6, ISO 400.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Cheryl, great job with the capture and what a nice specimen. A couple of things that you might consider - the eye and left side of the face are in shadow but could be brought up in PS, and I would suggest a more aggressive sharpening approach. Your gear is certainly capable of a sharper image and I think the info is there, just needs to be enhanced a bit. A good crop from the top (half of the empty space) makes this image much stronger in the composition department for me. Good job! I hope to see you here more often.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Kerry, thanks for your suggestions. Here's a repost. I used several different modes of sharpening - Topaz In Focus, usm and Topaz Adjust. Each one left me with plenty of blown highlights. Your thoughts are appreciated.

[Kerry Perkins]

Cheryl, nicely done on the repost! Looks much better to me. You do have to keep an eye on the highlights when doing sharpening! Good job. I'm off to the field...

[Gary Thompson]

Hi Cheryl, I really like your Red-shoulder shot. I think if you pull the brightness down a notch you will bring out the hawk better and reduce the highlights in the head area. You also have sharpening artifacts that look like they were the result of masking. I see them mostly around the head area of the bird. Another suggestion might be to increase the the brightness of the catchlight in the eye, it will enhance it. I can post the shot I played with if you are interested. It is very intent on watching something, that I assume will become lunch shortly. I had a pair of these all winter in my yard. They are very intense.

Gary

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi Cheryl, I really like your Red-shoulder shot. I think if you pull the brightness down a notch you will bring out the hawk better and reduce the highlights in the head area. You also have sharpening artifacts that look like they were the result of masking. I see them mostly around the head area of the bird. Another suggestion might be to increase the the brightness of the catchlight in the eye, it will enhance it. I can post the shot I played with if you are interested. It is very intent on watching something, that I assume will become lunch shortly. I had a pair of these all winter in my yard. They are very intense.

Gary

Gary - I'd love to see what you've done.

[Bill Dix]

Cheryl, repost improves the comp, IMHO. Sharpening helped the bird, but did leave some artifacts, left the perch looking a bit oversharpened on my screen. Did you sharpen the whole image, or just the bird and perch (the latter always being preferable to me).

[Gary Thompson]

OK Cheryl, here you go. It's just a quickie, but I think it brings out the hawk better. I'm not a pro photog or a PP expert, and I do believe that pictures are subjective to the person doing them (after all, you were the one that was there), so if you don't like it, let me know and I will take it down. I'm also new here and to this critiqueing business and have only posted a couple of shots here. I did a small curves adjustment on the shot and then added a touch of contrast and saturation to the hawk. I brought out the eye a bit and highlighted the catchlight just a little more to make the eye stand out better (it may be too much for you, but I think the eye is a very important part of the shot). Noise reduction on the background and sharpen the hawk with USM. I made a small crop off the top because that's the way I liked it (I guess that's what happens when you let someone play with your shots). If you separate the subject from the background and only sharpen the subject, you won't leave the artifacts of sharpening in the background. I do spend a little time masking, but it is worth it IMHO. If you don't understand any part of this let me know and I can try to explain how exactly I did it. I started with your original shot. Hope you like it.

Gary

[gail bisson]

Wow Gary. I love what you did! I have just downloaded the CS5 30 day trial so I think you should come to my house and show me how to use it!
Cheryl,
I love the setting and the environment that surrounds the hawk. Agree that the hawk is a bit soft in the original post but way too oversharpened in post #2.
Gail

[Cheryl Slechta]

Gary, sorry it took so long to get back to you - my dog has been deathly ill and I haven't been near a computer. I think he's fine now and your rendition is excellent! I've been using Elements which doesn't have very good curves adjustment and I just upgraded to CS5 so I haven't gotten used to that part of my workflow I don't ever use it in LR for some reason but I'll start playing around with it. Thanks for your time and effort - I really appreciate it.