Hawk

My neighbor was standing about twenty feet from this hawk taking its picture so I trotted in and grabbed my camera. As luck would have it, the hawk decided to move and make me shoot towards the evening sun. Not quite sure what type of hawk it is -- it is no more than 2/3 the size of an adult RTH. Perhaps it is a Coopers hawk -- the underside of the tail was light colored -- sort of barred white and light brown as best as I can determine from one blurred image. The hawk seems to be a regular visitor to our neighborhood. Hopefully, it finds the squirrels palatable.

The first image is ISO 800, f/8, 1/320 sec with 400 mm lens hand held.

Bill,

Nice captures of the hawk...

Im good with the sharpening myself, and you did well considering bringing it back up from 1 stop under exposed.

I might try selecting the background and adding a blur to the background to blend the pixelation some and help reduce the noise and blend it.

Have you ever tried a Program called Viveza 2 by Nic software its a plug in for Photoshop and allows parameter control of select areas of the photograph, makes it easy without using masks, its great software..

also may try a lil dodge and burn if you familiar with that.

Dan

Thanks, Dan. I am not familiar with that software. I have the NeatImage NR software plug-in. My new workflow for NR involves working on each of the separate color channels to lower noise. Most noise is in the blue channel usually and I have been applying Noise > Despeckle multiple times to the blue channel. I also normally apply it once or twice to the red channel and sometimes once to the green channel. I used to be really into creating multiple smart object layers for various parts of images, but that can be a big time killer with hundreds of images so I am trying to simplify my processing a bit. My sharpening workflow has gotten rather complex with multiple layers and edge masks so I need to create some actions to automate the process as soon as I feel like I have things working satisfactorily. Content sharpening will still need to be done by hand, but I will reserve that for the rare "hero" images.

Great little hawk. I like #1 as the overall feeling is really pleasant to me.

Good shots, Bill.

Great shots.

I like the lighting in the first shot Bill, but the turnaround of the second shot is impressive... pretty hawk and shots.

db

Nice opportunity Bill. It's an adult Coopers Hawk, judging by the thickness of the ankles and the color of the eye.

Nice captures

trmwf wrote in post #9390655
Great little hawk. I like #1 as the overall feeling is really pleasant to me.

Thanks, Mike.

sparker1 wrote in post #9390686
Good shots, Bill.

Thanks, Stan.

akhan wrote in post #9390830
Great shots.

Thanks, akhan.

dbriz wrote in post #9390896
I like the lighting in the first shot Bill, but the turnaround of the second shot is impressive... pretty hawk and shots.
db

Thanks, db. I agree on both points. The NR on the second image killed much of the fine detail.

canonloader wrote in post #9390920
Nice opportunity Bill. It's an adult Coopers Hawk, judging by the thickness of the ankles and the color of the eye.

Thanks, Mitch. I figured that it was probably a Coopers Hawk. The feet are not like the thick massive feet of a RTH where the feathers go all the way to the feet -- this hawk has "chicken legs" -- and, while the beak is not up to RTH standards, I am sure that it can handle a squirrel.

Are the halos any better around the edges of the hawk? I am trying edge masks in an attempt to reduce the size of edge halos.

artyman wrote in post #9391389
Nice captures

Thanks, Ken.

CanaHolic wrote in post #9389939
.... I might try selecting the background and adding a blur to the background to blend the pixelation some and help reduce the noise and blend it.....

Dan,

I did some more thinking about your comments and suggestions and it suddenly occurred to me that some of my sharpening steps have been applied globally which meant that I was sharpening any residual noise.

Additionally, I have been performing both noise reduction and sharpening within NeatImage which defeats some of the noise reduction.

So, thanks Dan for making me think a bit more about the background. The image below is from the same series of hawk shots at ISO 1600 with the biggest change being that I applied NeatImage to the background layer using only noise reduction and created a new layer for the in-focus foreground where I applied both noise reduction and sharpening. I think that the result is a smoother background and it was not necessary to apply a blur layer for the background.

The image below is a 38% crop from the original whereas the first two images were both 50% crops.

Actually, that is an immature broad-winged hawk. : ) Nice picture!

Bill, when I saw your image cropped at 38% I was stunned since it's that beautiful. I then went back and looked at the 50% crop and found it claustrophobic by comparison. Still a great photograph but doesn't come close to the gorgeous 'environment' shot with superb composition.

I prefer the last one also. Cute little hawk.
Karen

Great images Bill....I'm with Joe preferring the wider crop. I also agree that its a Broad Wing Hawk, our smallest Buteo.