The american kestrel was just at the top of this very tall tree when I was focusing on the Coots in the water. Helps to look around sometime out there. This was a hand held with the 90D with the canon 100-400 ii with the 1.4x extender so the lens was wide open at 560mm F/8 ISO 400 1/250 seconds. So I was a little surprised how sharp he was. I removed some other branches to the left and right because they were distracting. So looking for any more suggestions on this photo. The sky was replace with one of my cloud photos because the one that was in there looked like a light blue piece of cardboard. I wanted to add some depth in some sense. As I said, i always look for feedback from the NPN members
Nice pose and comp. Good job on the detail. I think the exposure is pretty good but I would drop the highlights a bit as some of the white plumage and the legs are too bright. The clouds are an interesting element here.
Thanks @David_Schoen, that was one thing I was wondering about so you just confirmed it. I used the adjustment brush in Lightroom Classic
Hi Dean, this is such an elusive subject so congrats on getting this image. The composition looks good to me even though I’m wondering if the clouds should be blurred some here. Exposure on the repost is an improvement. The bird seems to lack fine feather detail and I can see artifacts around the bird and perch which I assume is from the background replacement.
Thanks for the feedback @Allen_Sparks. One problem with this photo is how far the bird was. I always worry about cropping too much even through the camera sensor has a lot of pixels. So I wanted to post the way it was before anything was done so see how others approach the post process. This would be very valuable for me, actually I almost rejected the photo.
Dean:
I think you’ve received some sound input on the image. When I first opened the image, I didn’t read your comments, and my first reaction was that the bird looked like it had been pasted into a different background. After reading your comments (Thank You for sharing what you did!) I understand my reaction. I’m just not a fan of sky replacement. Nature is what nature is, but I know others feel differently and that is just fine and as requested, you shared those details, so again, thank you for doing so.
That was very useful @Keith_Bauer, never thought of it looking like the bird being pasted into the image but I agree so not happy with that effect. I think I will go with round 2 and see what I come up.
I updated my photo with round 2. I left the sky as is and I put a small blur on the edge of the back of the bird. Then changed it to portrait. Funny how the same photo can have 2 different views, I tend to like this one better. Any thoughts welcome. I am not good with bird photography, something I would like to learn more. I have found in astronomy that processing again on the same raw data even years later can create a much better photo because of skills developed over time. The feedback I have found very helpful on the NPN
Hi Dean. Considering the very large crop, you ended up with quite a good image. I’m impressed. In your repost, there’s a fair a mount of fringing around the perch, probably from sharpening, but considering the conditions, this is quite an impressive image.
Thanks @Dennis_Plank, big crops worry me some and maybe I am being too picky. I saw the fringing you saw and I fixed that. Also saw some color magenta color which Lightroom could not take out, I thought the adjustment brush had a way, the lens correction did not work nor did I expect it to. I fixed in in Photoshop. I am trying a plugin I found for sharpening but not impressed much right now, need to give it time. I did use the adjustment brush in LRC with the texture some. So I think after doing that I will call this one done. Thanks all for the feed back