Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I was out in the Santa Cruz Flats area near Tucson. Mostly farmland with a few trees and telephone poles . Good habitat for wintering raptors. I frequently get photos of individuals but, was pleased to get these two together. I usually see black birds mobbing, so this was a lucky exception for me.
Specific Feedback
I had some motion blur on the hawk and used Topaz AI sharpen. It looked fairly harsh against the clear sky so I added the clouds from PS. I don’t like to do that and prefer a natural image. However, I think it softened the hawks outline. I guess this comes under artist preference.
Any suggestion are greatly appreciated.
Technical Details
Canon R6, Canon 100-500mm, 1.4 extender, 700mm, 1/1000sec, f/10, ISO 640,Hand held.
LR cropped, adjusted, enhanced. Ps added sky.
A nice catch, Charlie. I try to remember to take shots of the sky when I see a nice one and file them away for future use rather than using someone else’s from PS. That way I can still say it’s all my image. I don’t use it often but every once in awhile it’s handy. Your hawk and kestrel both look a bit oversaturated to my eye and the bright side of the kestrel just forward of the tail is pretty bright. If you bring down the highlights in that area in LR or ACR (whichever you use) I think you can recover some detail there.
I’ve seen this behavior around here, but never been lucky enough to have it happen within range when I had a camera.
Thanks, Dennis. I think the harshness was due to the over saturation. The Kestrel’s bright area just wants to be gray when I decrease the highlight or exposure. Hopefully, a bit better with both less saturated.
Wonderful catch!! Good suggestions from @Dennis_Plank. I do the same, collecting skies of my own to use. In this case it’s a nice sky but it’s obviously wide angle, and the birds are clearly telephoto.
I’ve also seen a Kestrel chase a hawk, but too far away to get anything but a distant blur.
Nice moment you captured Charlie! I don’t mind the clear blue sky and am not a big fan of PS BGs, just my two cents. You did a good job of getting both birds sharp but then they both appeared to be over sharpened in post. If mine, I would back off the sharpening a tad because they are looking crunchy.
Pretty cool to get this interaction shot and the two raptors so close together. Particularly nice view of a Kestrel in flight. I think with the action present, the blue background is fine and the PS sky, as Diane pointed out, doesn’t look quite right. Also, it appears some of the blue of the PS sky is coloring the hawk’s beak blue
Hi Charlie, another vote for the original blue background. Nice catch of this chase scene. Composition looks good but the feather detail is somewhat lacking to my eye. Still a fine catch of a powerful moment in nature.
Thank you all. A work in progress.
