Be my guest ... play with my hawk !

Walked out in the backyard with the 450D and a 75-300 Non-IS canon "Kit" lens.... in a flash, I noticed a beautiful hawk in my Blue Spruce, trying his best to get some of my Finches that hang around the birdfeeders.... Slapped it into "Automatic Mode" (didnt' want to take time to change setttings) and he took off immediately... Got him in flight, but this is a perfect excuse to explore the option of getting the Sigma 120-400 f/4.5 OS version..

Anyway - I'd be interested to see what you can do with this photo.. Crop, adjust, and see how good you can make a margnal photograph.. Post your results... and - have fun..

BTW, any idea what kind of hawk this is? - I live in a suburb area and have never seen one in our backyard before...... I guess with about 1000 finches and 9 birdfeeders, I'm just providing them with a buffet that Vegas couldn't compete with...

Rick

That is a Coopers Hawk.

Had the same type of visitor to my little backyard this past Fall. My wife doesn't know how to use my camera and she just barely caught it as it munched on one of the doves that (used to) like to sunbathe on the roof. She didn't quite get it in focus.

This is kinda "crunchy".

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

It's great when chance comes your way! Hard to do much edit-wise with such a low-res image though.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Here is my try with the low res provided.

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Not much done to this one.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Here's my attempt, using LR3 on my MacBook:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Played up the motion blur a bit...

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Ugly Joe wrote in post #11559716
Played up the motion blur a bit...

Simple and elegant solution!

ChasP505 wrote in post #11559839
Simple and elegant solution!

I thought the original was kind of dynamic, and just emphasized that...felt like an action shot to me.

Ugly Joe wrote in post #11559888
I thought the original was kind of dynamic, and just emphasized that...felt like an action shot to me.

So you used Motion Blur in PS? What settings? And what method did you use to enlarge the low-res image?

ChasP505 wrote in post #11559906
So you used Motion Blur in PS? What settings? And what method did you use to enlarge the low-res image?

For the resolution, I had it set to 240 in my crop settings (CS5) - photoshop just filled in the blanks.

When I saved to a .jpg, I took the image back down to 1024 in the long dimension to keep to forum rules.

For the motion blur, I actually copied the hawk to a separate layer, then filled in (the shed/house wall) where it had been in the layer I blurred - that way, the motion blur wouldn't have any "inappropriate colors" bleeding around the hawk when I blurred it.
Another thing I did, before blurring, is I sharpened the heck out of the layer - blurring it before sharpening just muddied everything up, but making it quite sharp before the blur kept some of the details, making it more recognizable.
I used a setting of 100 pixels on the motion blur, and just angled it a few degrees off of level to make it look a bit more like panning.

Then, add the hawk back in (blur the edges a bit to blend it in), and there ya' go...

OK i really had to work at this, but here it goes. I used multiple layers, adjustment layers, Layer masks, I adjusted curves, Hue, Saturation, warped a little, Cropped and resized like crazy, and finally added a smidge of noise to hide any tell tale edits, but I think it works well......her it is

lecherro wrote in post #11566055
OK i really had to work at this, but here it goes. I used multiple layers, adjustment layers, Layer masks, I adjusted curves, Hue, Saturation, warped a little, Cropped and resized like crazy, and finally added a smidge of noise to hide any tell tale edits, but I think it works well......her it is

Man, that's Photoshop origami! Nice!!

You're tricking us ........ that couldn't be the hawk in my backyard.. I don't have that much water !!!!!

Actually, he/she came back later that afternoon - probably looking for dessert... Got a nice "Fence Shot"...

Great processing !!

Rick