I decided to try to look for a quick bird shot between an eye-appt. for daughter and a tutoring appt. I had. I stop often in some office park areas to look for song birds mostly, but there will be hawks occasionally. I was trying to capture a little carolina wren when swoosh came in this hawk (Originally, I thought it was a "red-tail' but I see the band on the tale, so it's either a Cooper's hawk or a Red-shouldered--leaning toward Cooper's Hawk). I did not have time to work on settings in manual as I knew I could miss my opportunity (which is part of the problem of bird photography), but I went into sport mode to avoid a miss. I did get an in-flight shot, but the focus is not ideal on that one. What I can't wait for is the 7D MarkII which would handle this situation much better than my T2i, which even on sport mode, can't fire quickly enough. The buffer time is too much. Cropped, used graduated filter for background, several radial filters for taking out shadows on the shaded portions. Desaturated some purples where needed (especially at the tip of the tail). I opened up clarity and shadows on main branch to expose texture). Rather chuffed to get this rare find for me these days.
You get a fav for the photo and a double fav for the processing! Also for thinking to put your camera in sport mode! Awesome all the way around. I think I like the blue, too... :-)
@squamloon I'm sooooooooo excited! It was officially ordered by me, but I wrote the birthday gift greeting from my husband--and he has no idea what it says. Hahahahahaha. Can I say how glad I am to see you here. And sports mode is a life saver, but just imagine how many shots I'll get of a moving object soon. Oh, and you will especially LOVE the radial and graduated filters on LR5. Just a question, but you know LR6 is going to launch in March? It might be worth waiting if you can switch. It will have probably something better. Just an FYI!
Oh gosh -- this is amazing -- I like the way he's got his head tilted like he's catching you out of the corner of his eye. You really are using the processing program well! I can't wait to learn this stuff! Did you mean you were out there in 9 degree weather getting this shot???? I'm impressed!
When are you getting the 7D Mark II?