I’ve been going through old images for a variety of end-of-year projects and I’d forgotten how often this bird visited us in the Middle of May. I had at least five days from the 11th through the 19th with lots of images. I almost got tired of shooting it. Still, I thought it would be fun to review some of the images. I really liked the backwards head on this one.
Horizontal position of the bird in the frame? Width of the frame (aspect ratio)?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Is this a composite? No.
Sony a6500, FE200-600 @ 600 mm, hand held, f/8, 1/640, iso 1600, manual exposure. Processed in LR and PS CC. Cropped from a horizontal to 2681x3329. I painted over a dark area in the background that I found distracting with a lighter color from nearby. The lichen in the lower right of the perch intersected the border, so I cloned over a bit of it. Other than that, local adjustments to the hawk and perch including micro contrast enhancements. Taken May 11th at 4:26 pm.
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Superb! Very well done with respect to detail, pose, background, and perch. On my monitor I am not having any issues with this current level of contrast. I suppose part of that is a matter of taste as I have a tendency to prefer higher contrast images within reason.
A wonderful catch! Contrast looks very good to me. The perch is slightly distracting, with more fine detail than the bird, so I’d carefully exclude the bird’s tail and soften the perch just a bit – probably more in sharpness than in contrast but maybe a bit of both. If you have the layers, you might be able to mask out the micro contrast boost in that area.
I’d move the bird just a bit left of center since it is slightly facing to the right, and add a bit more at the bottom if possible, and/or maybe trim a bit from the top. That would add a bit of subtle dynamics to the composition.
It looks really good to me Dennis. Aspect ratio looks good, bg looks good and I don’t see any over sharpening but that can be personal preference. Hawk does look a little bit centered so i might take a tiny slice off the right side of the frame which is what Diane said I think.
Really nice shot, and these head turns are always awesome ! In the larger version I see some ‘grid’ structure in the BG - too much compression? Otherwise fine as presented! Cheers, Hans
