Raven in flight

[Reynir Skarsgard]

I've been practising flight shots a lot lately and last weekend decided to try my luck with the ravens.
It took a lot of trial and error to get a decent exposure, it was overcast with the sun shining through
from time to time. I got some pretty good shots in the end though, including this one.
It was slightly overexposed but I pulled it back in Lightroom 4, cropped it a bit and adjusted the highligts and shadows.
The head angle could be better but they seemed uninterested in looking at the lens.
Any and all critique is welcome.

Canon EOS 7D
1/1000
f/5.6
Canon EF 400 mm f/5.6L
ISO 640

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Reynir, I think you did a good job on the exposure. You have good details in the bird - a tall order for Corvids. I would be inclined to tone down the bg a bit, as it is very bright compared to the bird. Do you have Photoshop? It would be very easy to select the bird and make separate layers so you could use levels or curves on just the background.

[Reynir Skarsgard]

Hi Kerry,

Thanks for the comments. You're right about it being hard to get good detail on these birds but it's lots of fun to practise.
I do have photoshop and I had a go at darkening the background a bit. I hadn't really thought about trying that but it came out pretty nice. I'll probably do that more next time I'm shooting ravens.
Here's a quick re-edit with a slightly darker background.