When the Sharp-shinned Hawks showed up Wednesday morning, it was raining and continued to do so for the first 10-15 minutes they were here. I liked the nice thin perch and the heavy looking rain in this one.
7DII, Sigma 150-600 C @ 600 mm, hand held, f/8, 1/1600, iso 1600, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 4110 x 2936 before resizing for the web. I added a small slice of canvas on the left using the content aware crop. For some reason, the content aware feature didn’t work very well on the rain and the added canvas was almost featureless, so I had to clone over it. Taken at 11:50 am on August 21st.
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It’s difficult to find anything about this image that requires critical analysis. It’s beautiful. The subject is spectacular. The colors are complementary. It is sharp and well exposed, technically well done. I like the short exposure so that the rain drops appear like points. You accomplished that apparently at a higher iso but no real noise. Bravo. I love the negative space on the right. I love the intensity of the stare. If anything, I might burn in that right lower corner - it’s pulling my eye down there, and maybe while you’re at it give a very light general vignette. Otherwise really nice photograph. I love it.
Thanks, Timothy. Now that you’ve mentioned it that out of focus foliage does pull my eye and I suspect after I fix the lower right, the upper right will be an issue so a vignette is probably an excellent idea. I’ll play with it today and see what I can do.
Thanks to @tim_floyd here’s a repost with the brighter green areas subdued and a modest (I hope) vignette applied. The vignette may be a bit much-it’s my first time playing with one and it looks like there’s a bit of learning curve. I used NIKs Colorefexpro4 vignette filter to create it then did some spot lightening where I thought it was a bit too much.
I think it’s better but now I can see the vignette so I agree with you that it might be a little too much. A lighter vignette and a little burning bottom right would be perfect (for my eye). Alternatively, you could keep it as it is here but burn in a little toward the left edge, say 2/5 of the left half where it’s lighter.
The rain really provided a very interesting effect. It almost looks like stars in the sky in the background with a touch of greenish Aurora. I think the first image is better without the vignette. It looks more sky like to me.
What a great shot, Dennis! That stare, the background complimenting the hawk, and those raindrops (as David said, looks like stars), this is really great. I like the second post best. I don’t feel that it is too much vignette. I guess that is just personal taste at this point. Anyway, and excellent shot.
