Courtyard King?

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

Courtyard King-43547-A7r3XL.jpg
Courtyard King-43547-A7r3XL.jpg1716×2000 2.8 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

I post here once every decade or so so please be brutally honest with critique and suggestions. We have some red shouldered hawks (please confirm ID and gender) that frequent the courtyard in front of our house. Chrissy and I were doing some tree trimming when she noticed this beauty. It flew away to another tree when I went inside for the camera and then perched on a relatively low limb and posed for several minutes while the light filtered through the leaves. I got a number of shots with different head positions and spotlighting and liked this one as a portrait. All suggestions and comments very welcome.

Specific Feedback

I shot this with my A7rIII and cropped. I also shot with my A77II for filling the frame more but with the smaller crop sensor. Any advantage to either choice? I have others from the A77II that I’ll post later with a different pose or two.

Technical Details

Sony A7rIII
Sony 70-400 G @ 400mm, 1.4xTC
ISO 400, 1/80 @ f8

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2

A decidedly unconventional presentation for this forum, Bill, but I find it grows on me. It certainly lends character to this bird (and yes, I think your ID is correct). The one change I might make is a small counter-clockwise rotation as this feels a bit unbalanced to me and there’s no horizon to worry about matching. Did you by chance get one of it looking down at you? I thnk that would be even neater (are you a man or a mouse?).

3

I do have some with him sizing me up. Will post that soon.

4

Hi Bill, this fella was a very fine subject and deserved to be photographed for sure. Only from an exposure POV I made some changes using NIK Grads and standard D&B to bring out maybe some more detail here. Again, a beautiful subject.

Courtyard King-43547-A7r3XL
Courtyard King-43547-A7r3XL858×1000 875 KB

1 Like
5

Great catch, Bill. I do like @Paul_Breitkreuz’s adjustments to the exposure. Nicely seen and captured.

6

Bill: this is an unusual and very nice perspective. I like the image very much and think you could bring up the shaded areas a bit. Congrats. Richard

7

Hi Bill, nice close up of this beautiful bird. Love seeing the buff chest so well. I do like Paul’s suggestion of brightening the bird some. Looking forward to seeing the additional pose of the bird looking down. This must have been a thrill to see so close.