Hi.

This is not an unusual subject but I like the different crop.
It was a hot day and the 'bird' was drinking constantly - hence the water droplet.

Hey,

Welcome aboard. This is quite an image. It is really sharp. I am assuming that it is a monster of a crop? Was this taken in the wild?

I think as far as wildlife portraits go, it is very nice. It certainly is quite sharp as I mentioned above, and it is presented differently than a lot of shots that are shown of eagles. LOL, I never get tired of seeing any of them.

I was playing with the photo in Photo Shop a bit this morning. I believe that the shadow tones can be pulled out quite a bit without destroying any detail - particularly around the eye and the front feathers. I will admit that I was having a bit of a difficult time keeping the layers together and looking natural at times as you really lose those highlights around the beak and back feathers quickly.
However, I just did a simple shadow highlights and it seemed to help significantly.

Thanks for posting - I like it a lot, but I think it needs a little bit of pp to really make it sing. There are others here who are much better at it than I am.

Again, welcome!
James

James, thanks for the words.

I was in a small village fair in France where this bird, together with some friends, were being displayed catching food, etc. It was flying around loose and just happended to land not far from where I was. Considering the huge size of this bird it was a surreal experience. I took a few quick shots, where I was lucky with the dark background, and this one, which is a 'monster crop', is my favourite - and mainly because it is so clear.

I haven't done too much to it in pp, just some tweeking of the background. I would really like to see what you 'experts' could make with it!

Dave

"I would really like to see what you 'experts' could make with it!"

Hey Dave,

LOL, I would not be holding your breath for me to work magic. My pp skills are good - but honestly, I am quite humble compared to many of the folks around. I will gladly make a stab out of it - if you wish, we can make it a photo processing challenge.

James

Hi

I'll have a go too then. This is one of my earlier pics and I have leant a little bit more about pp since then - so I'll have another go.

That's great. Does anyone else want to make a stab of it?

James

Cool shot....would love to go to my local Raptor shelter and do a days worth of shooting....

I played with it...there is a LOT of noise in the shot...was this under exposed and adjusted in PP?

Here is what I could do with the small .jpg you posted.



Roman

It's a great shot to start with. Here is my meager offering. Mostly color correction to get the yellowness reduced and some levels adjustment and sharpening around the eye. A tiny bit of noise ninja applied at the end.

Hey Guys,

Nice job, both of you, on the re-touch of this. You are right about the noise...there is definitely quite a bit there. However, the composition is quite striking.

James