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Hi Guys,

Enclosed are a series of Pictures I took a couple of days ago in Rotoruas Wingspan birds of Prey Trust (am in NZ visiting my parents). They are of NZ Falcons (a native endangered species) apparently the worlds most vicious....they are small (i.e. weight of a 12-24 DX) but my god are they fearless, fast and manouverable.

I ended up sponsoring a female called Dimond - she is included in the photos below.

Unfortunately missed the most exciting when she took off chased away a wandering harrier hawk and attacked a duck. Missed both chases (was changing lenses... )

Apparently the duck was able to duck into some follaige just before the "Kill point" at the last minute. According to the Falconers she regularly hunts and killed several rabbits, pigeons and ducks. Apparently as a chick she fell on her head so consequently can only hunt, she can't be trained to attack a lure.

Photo taken from ISO 200-400 using both my 17-55 DX and 70-200 VR. All have been cropped and some have been slightly lightened up in Photoshop.

Let me know what you think and what the improvements are.

A beautiful looking bird and very nice images.

Yeah very nice indeed. #5 is my favourite, captured the moment really well

Chris

Thanks guys, for the comments , but cumon your being too nice...

Improvements?

#1 framed about right but could do with fill flash as this will bring out the rich detail in the underside of the bird.
Bird plumage can look dramatically better with fill flash
#2 I like the pose of the bird here but feel it is too closely cropped, your subject needs to breathe, plus the tail is missing, I would leave it in if you have it on the frame.
#3 looks tack sharp nice and dramatic
#4 too closely cropped, if you have the wings, include them in the frame, plus flight shots are better if the bird actually has somewhere to fly into.
$5 nice dramatic pose but too closely cropped for me, Also looks like the birds eyes arent tack sharp.
If you can make the eyes tack sharp, the brain can tolerate something else not being so. Try to get tack sharp eyes if possible.

I have been spending a bit of time trying to get good birds shots. Some of the stuff mentioned above (fill flash etc) is stuff that the pros tell me is the way to go.
Regards Steve

Thanks for the advice avkomp, crops can be fixed easyily enough, the filler flash I will use on my next trip out there.

Thanks again