Hawkwatch

[rpcrowe]

I attended "Hawkwatch" at the Ramona, California Wildlife Sanctuary and was introduced to their many resident raptors. Most of these birds had been injured and did not recover sufficiently to be reintroduced into the wild so they are living as "raptor ambassadors" at the sanctuary...







Other Hawkwatch images are at: http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/Other/Bir...2425&k=cN7XNGm

[jeeperman]

Looks like a good day and time well spent, Richard. All are good but the first one is superb!

[Sergio M.]

Awesome images, Richard. Wonderful focus and clarity.

[rpcrowe]

I forgot my little voice recorder so I didn't take notes and I don't remember what types of raptors these are. Oh gosh! I wish that my camera had a voice recording capability to record information for shots... Tell you what Canon; I'll gladly trade the "print from camera" capability for a wee bit of voice recording. Heck, I'll even throw in the 7D "JPEG when shooting raw and raw when shooting JPEG" button. How's that for a trade, two useless things for a very useful item...

[Mike Buckley]

Those of us who follow your dedication to finding "furever" homes for the dogs appreciate what must be going through your mind when you photograph these wounded raptors.

The first one is a spectacular composition, but I wonder what is causing the horizontal, dark streaks in the sky. The second one is so good that I hope you'll consider toning down the highlights in the background to make it even better.

For me, the last photo doesn't stand up to the quality of the others; it has too little depth of field and there is a blue halo around the bird's beak, etc.

[Steve S]

Very nice shots richard. I bet that was fun, getting that close to such a magnificent bird.

[rpcrowe]

Mike, The horizontal dark streaks in the images are above ground electric wires which were thrown OOF, I tried to get rid of them but, the result was a bit of a mess so I decided to leave them. They do kind of look like a cage but, these raptors were not in cages. They were being shown my the staff at the Wildlife Center.

The wildlife Preserve has a lot of acreage that it keeps in the wild for raptors and other animals. We saw a lot of different raptors flying around but they were so high that shooting them was worthless. There is a Golden Eagle nest on the sanctuary property but, the eagles were out somewhere hunting and were not by their nest.



Here is a shot of a Bald Eagle in an Kenai Alaska wildlife preserve that I shot through the mesh of its cage. We was another bird who was wounded by a shotgun and can no longer fly.

[jprzybyla]

Nice images of wonderful birds. Hawks are magnificent. Your first image was so good I removed the smudges from the overhead wires. I hope I did not overstep doing that but I wanted you to have the image without the smudges.

[Mike Buckley]

Nice job, Joe. You also treated the sky in the top right corner of the image with excellent results.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks Mike... It looks much better! How did you do that? I was having problems where the smudges hit the bird...

[jprzybyla]

Thanks Mike... It looks much better! How did you do that? I was having problems where the smudges hit the bird...

Hi Richard, I did it in Photoshop Elements 10. I used the Quick Selection Tool to make a selection of the Hawk and the frame. Then by right clicking the selection I chose to invert the selection which chose everything but the selection. This protected the Hawk and the frame from any work being done. I then used the Cone Stamp tool and selected a portion of the sky not smudged. Then cloned over the smudges changing their color to the sky. Next I lowered the opacity to blend in the work. The final step was to right click the selection and delete it. Real quick once familiar with the steps.

[Bobobird]

I see that birds finally got to you.

Great images - keep them coming.

[Mike Buckley]

I never have given thought to applying the Clone tool to a selected area to prevent it from accidentally affecting unwanted areas. Thanks for the tip, Joe!