Hawk attempt for some C&C

It's a nice shot. It sure would have been nice if you had gotten on the bird's left side instead of the right. You would have had better light on the face.

What is in the background? From the apparent shooting angle, one would expect trees or sky. To me, it's a major distraction. I spent more time trying to figure out what it was than I spent admiring the hawk.

joedlh wrote in post #6797355
What is in the background? From the apparent shooting angle, one would expect trees or sky. To me, it's a major distraction. I spent more time trying to figure out what it was than I spent admiring the hawk.

Such an interesting comment!!!! The background is apartments near my home. I live right next to Kinko Bay in southern Kyushu (Japan) and the hawks live and fly the whole area. An old guy comes and throws chicken to them, almost every day around 4:30pm, so the birds swoop right over/around you as you're taking their pictures. Kinda shocking at first as they're silent until the wings flash past your ears!!! But a real priviledge to any bird-lover.

I could get 'sky' in another picture if really you want to see it, but having the birds so close to the ground was interesting, I thought. I took some more pictures yesterday so will post another later to see what you all think.

SwingBopper wrote in post #6789856
I think it could be a little brighter though.

Hey, I've just realised that on the PC I'm using to see this thread today (in the office....shhh!!!) every picture looks vastly different to my own laptop!!! I wonder if that's one of the issues with brightness/colour/etc that people have noted.
On this PC, the colours on my 3rd attempt look terrible. Way too artificial. Whereas on my (fairly new and callibrated - I think!) laptop, they looked "tweaked" only, but still close to how the bird really looks. #1 on this PC looks really flat, but on my laptop, very accurate.
Hmmm...I can see that colours/brightness/con​trast and so on are difficult to judge from screen to screen....

Oh well.

It's hard to say about colors on laptop screens since they all use TN panels which are very sensitive to viewing angle. Also, unless you personally have calibrated the screen, then it is neither calibrated nor profiled. The manufacturers just use a generic profile that sort of matches the average screen of a particular model.

bill boehme wrote in post #6801633
It's hard to say about colors on laptop screens since they all use TN panels which are very sensitive to viewing angle. Also, unless you personally have calibrated the screen, then it is neither calibrated nor profiled.

Thanks for that...I thought the same, so I calibrated my screen about 4 months ago. Dunno if they go 'off' in that time, but it seems ok.
Having said all that, my friend has a disgustingly huge CRT for his PP and images look incredible on that.
I guess the only thing I can do is print out an image, say, 24" x 36", capture a hawk and pin it to my picture. Then, in perfectly balanced, even lighting, see if my picture looks the same as the hawk's feathering, etc...

Hmmmm, maybe I'll just hope for the best instead.

Meanwhile......here comes two more shots from yesterday's shoot with my 100-400.

joedlh wrote in post #6797355
From the apparent shooting angle, one would expect trees or sky.

Here you are...just to please you, I popped next door to the park yesterday and took these shots with my 100-400. BOTH pictures have sky in them!!! Ok, so there're some trees too, but be thankfull I haven't included the pictures when the hawks were only about 75cm from the ground. Loads of distractions!!!

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Wow, that first one of the second set is really dramatic. It looks like it's looking right at you as it's beginning its dive. Great capture! It maybe could use a little sharpening though. Is this a heavy crop or close to full frame?

SwingBopper wrote in post #6803824
Wow, that first one of the second set is really dramatic. It looks like it's looking right at you as it's beginning its dive. Great capture! It maybe could use a little sharpening though. Is this a heavy crop or close to full frame?

Thanks for the comment. I've not sharpened the picture at all, and no, it isn't a heavy crop - just a massive reduction in file size from 7.2MB to 150kb (or thereabouts).

I read that doing that can screw up the sharpening, so if you saw the full size file, the sharpening is spot on. Do you know about sharpening requirements on hugely reduced file-sizes? I wonder if there's a thread somewhere about it....?

Well I'd sharpen it before you compress it and after. That's what I usually do. I'm sure there are threads in the Techniques section.

I love the one of the hawk making an inverted dive. It almost looks like he is trying to wring his own neck.

I hope that you can tolerate just one more edit. I picked a white patch under the wing and did a white balance to make it neutral. Also, as far as JPG compression is concerned, instead of trying to compress and image that is the maximum allowed dimension of 1024 pixels to fit 150 KB file size limit, I would opt for making the image a bit smaller and then the need for compression is greatly reduced. In my edit, I reduced the maximum dimension to 720 KB which dramatically reduces the file size. As SwingBopper mentioned, sharpening helps an image, too. I do output sharpening using USM in one or two of the color channels after final sizing. If the image were being printed, I would apply considerably more sharpening. In addition to output sharpening, I also do capture sharpening in ACR and occasionally I will do selective sharpening as part of the post processing workflow in Photoshop.

Anyway, here is the edit of the hawk with a white balance adjustment and also some sharpening in the red and green channels for output.

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bill boehme wrote in post #6813888
I love the one of the hawk making an inverted dive. It almost looks like he is trying to wring his own neck.

I hope that you can tolerate just one more edit. I picked a white patch under the wing and did a white balance to make it neutral. Also, as far as JPG compression is concerned, instead of trying to compress and image that is the maximum allowed dimension of 1024 pixels to fit 150 KB file size limit, I would opt for making the image a bit smaller and then the need for compression is greatly reduced. In my edit, I reduced the maximum dimension to 720 KB which dramatically reduces the file size. As SwingBopper mentioned, sharpening helps an image, too. I do output sharpening using USM in one or two of the color channels after final sizing. If the image were being printed, I would apply considerably more sharpening. In addition to output sharpening, I also do capture sharpening in ACR and occasionally I will do selective sharpening as part of the post processing workflow in Photoshop.

Anyway, here is the edit of the hawk with a white balance adjustment and also some sharpening in the red and green channels for output.

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Hey Bill, edit away!!!! No probs That's why I put the pictures here...
So, it seems I've a lot to learn about sharpening and compression, but I've only had Lightroom for a short while and need to get on top of all it's various intricacies...
As to the colours, what's interesting to me was that the sun was very low in the sky when I took the "inverted dive" shot - you're right btw, that was taken just as the hawk span, at about 8 metres from the ground before the swoop to catch the chicken. Anyway, the sun's position meant that the bird's feathers were about as golden as possible. I think the 2nd picture shows the right colours (here, the bird was away from direct sunlight) but I just love the intensity of the golds in the dive shot.
Thanks again to all, for the advice and comments....

Bill, that's a very nice edit; but why sharpen only 2 color channels? And how do you just sharpen one color channel and not the whole image? And finally would you explain "output sharpening". The only sharpening I have done is in Photoshop.

I would love the opportunity to take photos like these. Looks like a lot of fun. I attempted a couple of edits on the photos. I like using layer masks on different portions of a photo applying noise ninja, lens blur, sharpening, levels, and contrast/brightening. Here are my results.

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For this one, I liked your original edit. The only thing I really did here was sharpen the head, beak, legs, and nesting material and removed noise from the background using a lens blur layer mask. Oh, and I also did a levels adjustment masking for the hawk only. Honestly, I don't like any of the edits in this thread on this photo. Your original was fine, albeit just a tad dark.

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Reign wrote in post #6816721
For this one, I liked your original edit. The only thing I really did here was sharpen the head, beak, legs, and nesting material and removed noise from the background using a lens blur layer mask. Oh, and I also did a levels adjustment masking for the hawk only. Honestly, I don't like any of the edits in this thread on this photo. Your original was fine, albeit just a tad dark.

Hey Reign, thanks so much for the input and WOW! I'm really impressed with your PP.
What/how are you doing that???? Masking different parts and bluring individual sections?!?!?!?!? HOW DAMMIT....TELL ME HOW!!!!!