Redtail Hawk in Winter

Taken February 2007. Cropped a little from a 5D 500mm Bigma exposure.

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Word of advice, make the watermark less intrusive in the image. With one that is that large, it really can be distracting.

Good shot mate, I really like it. Could use a bit of a levels adjust to bring out his feathers and his eye, but that's a great shot. I didn't even notice the watermark, I was drawn to the tree.

I think it's partly from having the sun on the other side of the hawk, but the hawk doesn't "feel" sharply focused or detailed. I was surprised to find quite a lot of sharpness around some of the high-contrast points with the white feathers against the tail feathers... but generally it looks quite smoothed somehow. I think you'll have to be careful how you do it, but I'd run with Karl's idea of adjusting the levels... failing that, local contrast, sharpening, whatever you can think of until it comes together just so. If you've only cropped a little, you've presumably got quite a lot of detail there to work with, and the picture will be worth the effort. Cheers, Tony

It was a cloudy day, no sun. The photograph might be a little front focused on the tree. I did what I could hand held at 500mm. I think it was iso1000 and 1/250. Just stumbled upon the area and someone pointed the hawk out to me and it was nice enough to stay while I switched lenses from my backpack.

It's probably front focused because of the dim lighting and the Bigma being just f6.3 at full zoom doesn't let much light in. But I'm happy with what I got.