A Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
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Redtails
Redtails1500×1116 660 KB

What technical feedback would you like if any? Any?

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Pertinent technical details or techniques: D500 600mm f4 (1/800 sec at f10, ISO 1000). I was photographing this pair of red-tailed hawks and was playing around with various camera settings while trying to accommodate the dim lighting. Suddenly, the female took off when I was not prepared and fired off shots. With heavy noise in the shadows, I tried various programs and this one is a combination of Lightroom, DXO PhotoLab 4, and Photoshop. Noise reduction in LR with Topaz DeNoise, followed with lighting adjustments in PhotoLab. I then finished this in Photoshop with dodging the eyes and sharpening. It is far from perfect, but a lesson in using various software packages for advantageous fixes. PhotoLab, for example, changed the speckling Nikon noise to chroma noise and left all the whites in shadow very blue. Lightroom was the most conservative regarding color and produced the best noise reduction with DeNoise AI…Jim

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Impressive catch! The technical description of how you did this is most interesting. Getting both birds in focus is a feat in itself. The title is perfect…

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I would concur with David’s comment. Getting both heads/eyes in focus makes the photo. Good title, given the look the male seems to be giving the female. Good job in processing.

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Interesting processing, Jim. Excellent job catching the take-off and having the birds in focus. It’s so easy for the one taking off to get out of focus before I click (slow reflexes). This would be a good photograph with either of the hawks alone. With both it’s excellent.

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This is a very cool shot Jim, the comp is great. I thought all the branches would be too distracting looking at the thumbnail but viewing it large it all works well.

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