I took some exposure advice to heart yesterday and got back out in the field today. Not an award winning image by any means, but much more pleasing to my eye than the Osprey shots from yesterday.
Any and all.
The exposure looks excellent, Larry, and you picked a very difficult situation to practice on… The hawk is still just a bit soft, but I suspect the camera picked up on the perch rather than the bird as the focal point. Another trick of the trade-when shooting perched birds, particularly in busy surroundings, I’ll use the smallest single Autofocus point my camera allows and focus on the face, preferably the eye. For birds in the clear, I’ll loosen up and use a few surrounding AF points to speed acquisition and for birds against the sky I’ll use even more (mainly because I’m a lousy shot and have trouble getting on target, so I need all the help I can get).
I like that focus suggestion, Dennis. I will keep that in mind for perched birds.
FWIW, check out that bulge in the feathers. it appears this bird might have a bad foot. It has a mate who also hangs in the same area so hopefully together they can survive.
Here is another shot that shows the foot better:
