I'm new to the forum and this is my first photo posting here.
I was lucky enough to come upon a dead wild hog with several Crested Caracara, Turkey Vultures and Black Vultures around it last week. I was able to just park my truck across the road from it and wait. After awhile the dead hog was really swarmed with Vultures and the two Crested Caracara that were near it left.
This is one of my favorite shots from that day.
I know it's a bit gruesome, but I do like the drop of blood/goo coming off of the Turkey Vulture's beak. They had started a 'hole' and the birds had their whole heads and necks inside of the hog.
Canon XTi
Canon 100-400mm f4/5.6 USM IS L
Processed in Adobe Lightroom (just some lightening done).
This was shot in the 'action' mode on the camera. It was one of those 'just in case' shots you take when you first come upon something you've never seen before, lol. I'm still working on using the camera in other modes so not as to rely on the 'auto' settings.
I wish the two birds' heads didn't merge so that we could see the TV a little better. Exposure wise, there are a few spots on the Caracara that are borderline, but could easily be brought back with the original (hopefully RAW) file.
Keep 'em coming
The Goo, add interest even if it is a bit gruesome.
It would be great if you could post up to the 800 pixels max for folks to take a better look.
Hi Heather, Welcome. I moved your post to ETL so that you can get all the help that you need. Yes to sharp, and nice to get the two birds together. While the white neck of the caracara is very white, the shaded underparts of the vulture are a detail-less black. With the bright sun, one bird in the sun, and one partially shaded it is difficult to avoid the high contrast look. A cloudy day would have been a great help. At what time of day was the image made? (The light looks quite harsh.) Lastly, I would suggest that you credit line is a bit over-powering. Alfred might be able to suggest some Lightroom stuff that would help.
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I do believe this was taken probably around 10am in the morning. The light is very harsh in the area where I took this.
And, the large 'watermark' there is for flickr's benefit since I have the images hosted there. I did hear there's a way to add a watermark in Lightroom but I haven't figured that out yet. Anyone know?
Good news from LightRoom The upcoming version will have presets and some other goodies One will allow you to export images to flickr directly from LR !!!! I think the new version will be out in a month or so Just starting to work with the Beta and check all the features Will let you know
With your image you can recover some shadow detail with the recovery slider in LR Works well !!! Worth trying The light at the time of exposure was more than the contrast range you could reproduce !!!
....btw if you have LR now the Beta is available from the Adobe site !!!
Crested Caracara And Turkey Vulture
