[ksten]

Evening all,

Spent a fantastic day at the Hawk Conservancy Trust near Andover in Hampshire today. It was a beautiful clear day which made for a very relaxing time as well as a burnt face and lots of blown highlights! Oh well. It was great fun all the same.

Anyway, here are the images that I've loaded onto my Flickr:

1. Intense

2. Eagle Eyes

3. African Fish Eagle

4. Bald Eagle

5. Incoming Owl

6. Landed Owl

7. Hunting Owl

8. Claws

9. Secretary

10. Mind the Rocks

11. Bright Out

12. Tawny Owl

13. Eye of the Owl

14. African Fish Eagle Claws

15. African Fish Eagle Soaring

16. Majestic

17. Final Approach

18. Successful Landing

19. Deserved Reward

20. Damn

I am absolutely gutted about number 20! Missed focus and not enough DOF to save me. Oh well, I'll learn for next time ... maybe.

Lots of images but C&C welcomed and appreciated if you feel like it on any of them.

Cheers.

[PaulBoy]

Some beauties there - I've been there too its a great place to see birds of prey & they put on great shows!
Paul

[jomike]

I really enjoyed the African Fish Eagle shots (pity about the last one being OOF). It brings back memories of camping in a place called Mtunzini on the KwaZulu Natal north coast in South Africa where there were a breeding pair of Fish Eagles. The sight and sound of these magnificent birds will always be with me. The call of the Fish Eagle is considered to be one of the distinctive sounds of the African bush.

Mike

[Puli]

There is some cracking good shots there. Pics of the flying Owl and the Eagles eyes are the best for me.

What sort of PP work did you do on the Eagles eyes to get them so clear?...(If any of course!!)

I know what you mean about the last one but the rest are lovely. I did some a while back but none flying as it was too windy. There so Photogenic would like to go again when flying......

Paul.

[Gizmo 76]

Some superb captures indeed, great work

Fav's out of all of them, in list form

#4 - Awesome pose, detail and lighting, yeah maybe a little blown out on the top of the head, but I still love the shot.

#3 & #6 - Just are quality shots, with very good composition and great detail.

#13 - Great close up which shows plenty of detail again!!

#18 - You obviously have done this a few times before Great timing and composition.

#17 - Really like the eagle is flying into the space on the right, so great composition, another thumbs up!

#19 - I'd like to see more of the trainer's hand, but once again still a cracking shot.


And the others not mention are by no means bad shots, all are very good.

Your PP'ing work is really well done, perfect sharpness, great colours, really enjoyed looking

[Holowlegs]

Hi ya


Some very nice shots there. Really do like 3 & 6 out of the portrait ones, but 19 really stands out for me.


Cheers Holo

[ksten]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

PaulBoy - yes, the shows were excellent and very entertaining.

Mike - you are very lucky to have seen these creatures in the wild. I've not been to a place like this before so was in awe of these birds. The flying demonstrations really showed their power and grace.

Puli - in answer to your question about the Eagle Eyes photograph, I generally have the same workflow with all my photographs but depending on the subject the extent to which I do things will vary. A summary is:

- I shoot everything in RAW.
- I use Canon DPP to browse the RAW files, selecting those which are my favourite and have a good chance at turning out well (I physically move these to a separate directory)
- I go through the selected files, change the white balance if necessary, set the picture style to faithful, leave colour tone at 0, usually increase saturation up a couple of steps, set sharpness to 0 then adjust the exposure if necessary (By eye and using the histogram).
- Then I transfer to photoshop.
- If necessary I use Noise Ninja to reduce noise whilst trying to maintain sharpness (no sharpening is done yet though).
- At this point I may crop the image if necessary. I genearlly keep a 3:2 to match the uncropped aspect ratio, but I have done the occasional square crop too.
- I may clone / heal any blemishes (e.g. sensor dirt etc).
- I look at levels and curves to see if I would like to change anything. Generally I do as the faithful picture style usually looks pretty flat.
- I may dodge and burn areas of the image (E.g. the pupils and catchlights).
- Depending upon the image I may selectively lift the curves in any dark portions (In this example, this is what I did for the Eagle Eyes).
- The dodging and curves adjustments sometimes pushes the colour saturation too far so, again for the eagle eyes, I selectively reduced the saturation of the eyes as they looked too red even though they were bloodshot.
- When I'm happy with the colour balance, saturation, brightness and contrast of the image I will finally apply some USM as no in camera sharpening had been done. Again, this may be selectively done - e.g. around the eyes.
- Finally, I change to 8-bit mode and save as level 12 JPG before uploading to flickr.

That looks like a lot now I've gone through it all but I actually think that the major task in the whole workflow is going through all the images and deciding which ones to leave and which ones to PP. Most images are then processed in a few minutes although some difficult ones I can spend much longer on! For now I enjoy the PP as much as making the photographs so I'm happy to spend time in front of my computer.

Gizmo - I don't know about having done this a few times before! I just made extensive use of the continuous drive on my camera! The eagle was really pleased with itself having landed on the glove successfully and let out a loud and triumphant call to much applause from the audience!

Holo - thanks for the comments. It means a lot coming from the master of bird photography!

Before I go, a final couple from the day:

21. Returning Harris Hawk

22. Harris Hawk

Cheers.

[dingle]

Keith,
They are all good shots. No 19 is a fab image for me. I personally think that you got the crop right otherwise your eye may wander to keeper's hand.
What lens did you use?

dingle

[ksten]

Thanks Dingle.

The lens was a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM.

Cheers.

[senu]

Very impressive collection.. even the one that got away!

Im sure you know DPP has noise reduction which seems to work well on the Canon RAW files without softening.
However since you have Ninja .. why not use it
The colour tone from #14-18 seems a bit different ( in a nice way) to those before and after.. Do you stick to "faithful" in camera or DPP?

Altogether very accomplished (IMO) birds always seem to move too fast for me
However I suspect it would be much harder if the lens didnt have IS

[Liquid101]

Nice work.

I think the close up portrait shots work well. Very intense.

I actually quite like No 20. I can't put my finger on why exactly. Perhaps because the spot just in front of the eagle is sharp, suggests that there is something waiting to be caught.

Anyway, nice work. You've handled the moving targets and focussing very nicely indeed

[ksten]

Thanks Senu.

The different colour tones in those images were caused by my PP in Photoshop. I didn't do the same amount of burning and colour balance / saturation changes on all the photographs, hence the differences. In isolation I was happy with the skies but put next to each others the differences become obvious.

I used IS on the portrait shots but didn't on the birds in flight shots - not even in mode 2. Instead I opted for pushing the ISO and ensuring that the shutter speed was sufficient to remove any camera shake. The reason for this was that the birds were often coming from unexpected directions (especially with multiple birds flying simultaneously) so I didn't have chance to do a nice pan most of the time.

Cheers.

[ksten]

Thanks Liquid. It was a fun day and would recommend it to anyone.

Cheers.

[Nike]

Lovely pics, I had already seen some of them on your flickr a/c.
I have Libertys Raptor Centre a stones throw from me; this has inspired me to revisit them with the new camera

[ksten]

Excellent, looking forward to seeing them when you've been.

[Puli]

Ksten,

Thansk for taking the time out and sharing your Workflow. Its something I haven't got to grips yet as I tend to "play" around rather than something step by step.

I have a couple of "good" shots of Hawks recently, But couldn't get the detail in the eyes out, so I am going to have another go tonight using your advice.

Many thanks

Paul

[ksten]

Puli,

No problem mate. Don't take my workflow as gospel though. I've only been at it for less than a couple of months myself so I'm sure there are better workflows out there! I tend to play around too, it's just that I tend to find myself doing the same thing with most of my photographs to a greater or lesser extent.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Cheers.

[loz]

Hope you don't mind me hijacking the thread, but I thought it better than starting another on the same subject.

Went to the Hawk Conservancy Trust today. Fantastic place, and thoroughly recommended.
Unfortunately, despite the forecase it was dull and overcast most of the day. So not ideal for high speed BIF pics (unless you have a big fast lens, which I haven't...).

It is certainly more entertaining than walking around some aviary looking at birds in a cage.

And the birds are not just flown at a distance from the audience, but many are flown right through and into the audience.

I had one of these fellars brush my head

so you can get some pretty close up pics if you are quick

I also had a very close encounter with a very large owl, but we were not allowed to take pictures of him as he doesn't like cameras apparently, having once crashed into a photographer.

Certainly no shortage of photo ops

They had one of their special photography days running today - who knows one of you might have been there today. It isn't cheap at £125, but you certainly seem to get a real close up opportunity and lots of extra time with the birds alone (without the big audience), that the normal audience cannot, and a lot more opportunities to get that special shot.

But otherwise, the £9 odd normal admission is well worth the price.

[gpa]

Hi Kieth

Nice set of pics from a place close to my heart (only live 10mins away) love No2 and No19 Don't beat yourself up over the last pic (fish eagle) I have been trying to get a pic of that picking food from the water tray, have got everything but the pic I'm after LOL.

"I also had a very close encounter with a very large owl" and did you encounter Goliath the little owl


The woodland show is great, but lacks light so very difficult to get good pics.

Did they fly the Kites ?

Perhaps we should have an AV day there at some point ?