I captured this Ferruginous Hawk at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge the other morning.
Any feedback would be great!
I am not really keen on the small branch to the left of it, and having a difficult time with Lr and Photoshop to remove it without minimizing the subject.
I use Lr for Post and changed to Landscape for color and decreased the highlights. I wanted to reflect the morning sun as it was hitting the tree and the hawk.
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Wonderful capture of the Ferruginous Hawk. I’d love to get my glass on this fine proud bird.
I made a few edits on the image, primarily with local adjustments to bird Black,Mid,white points, as well as de saturating the gold and putting black back into to help define and sculpt the feather. I also took out of some of those pesky branches. The bulk of the image is in the midtone, so I also adjusted those tones with micro adjustments. I used Nik to put a soft center spot on just the bird.
Just a few things to consider, but boy is that a wonderful bird !
Hi Todd. I don’t recall you posting to the Avian forum before, so welcome. This is a great place to learn. I like Fritz’s removal of the small twigs, but I prefer your warm morning light.
It’s always difficult to tell what your constraints were, but it looks as if a step or two to your right might have gotten that pesky branch out of the way. I think it’s a bit large and badly positioned to allow removal, though some people are very good at that.
When I looked at the largest image, it seemed like the focus was on the branch in front of the bird, so a little extra sharpening to the hawk might be nice. For birds buried in branches, the smallest single point autofocus your camera supports is usually the best.
Lastly, I think a vertical crop would be wonderful for this.
As Fritz said, it’s a wonderful bird, and the light is gorgeous.
