Great shots. The foggy morning light really adds to the image. I like the first one best because of the posture of the bird; it has the most action. I would edit out the black fuzz on the left edge of the frame, it's a bit distracting from what is otherwise a great background. The last image really has attitude!
I was curious if someone would comment on that fuzz on the left. That really bugged me too and I tried to get rid of it. I tried the object remove, clone and heal and just couldn't get it removed while not leaving small artifacts or slight distortions in the otherwise smooth background. It seems like it ought to be super simple. I gave up but was going to come back to it. I do almost all of my editing in LR, but this might be one for PS. I might be able to just crop it out and then stretch the background.
As per Elbert - and On the bottom border there is also a black spec to be painted out
The photos are beautiful and well captured. The only comment I would like to add is that it needs more editing - the images looks flat with little contrast.
Even by only setting black and white points in the image, it makes a massive difference. I like all of them. Super great captures.
Hmmm... I'm trying to decide if it's good or bad that you don't think I've done much editing on it. I've actually done quite a bit, and spent a number of hours editing these. I worked the tone curves, colors, balance and a variety of other things. I try to keep my edits subtle though. I also don't like going too deep with the blacks. To me it gives it more of a digital look. I often raise the black end of the tone curve to give it a slightly more film look. Years ago, I used to go pretty strong on the blacks and a bit heavy on the s-curve contrast, but now when I look back on those photos they make me cringe a little. It's possible I've over-corrected a little and might need to find a happier middle ground (including trying out the latest fad of midtone contrast ....).
For these, I debated adding more contrast, but in reality the shot was in the fog and it was fairly low contrast in real life. I've gone back-and-forth several times on whether to embrace the subtleness the fog provided, or go for a more common in-your-face type, more dramatic look.
Focusing on the last one, you have a nice bit of light in the eyes, I would maybe selectively bump that up just a touch and maybe the general eye area. If lightroom maybe a radial mask and use the eyedropper in the curve tool to pinpoint the eye and raise it a bit. Agree on the contrast, something the curve could handle as well. Also I'd look at the disembodied sticks coming up from the bottom, see if you like it better with some removed for a cleaner portrait. Also maybe try a 5:4 or 4:3 crop, you don't need that much room left and right. Finally the background has some color in it, maybe just brighten it and increase the saturation to help it glow and to contrast more with the bird. This will sound bonkers but if you select sky, then subtract select sky, then inverse, you get a cleaner sky selection than just select sky. Something I saw on YouTube but it works. Or you could just select sky.
Yes, I'm familiar with the select sky, invert and subtract trick. One of the youtube channels I follow showed that a while back. I've used it a number of times, though I've found that sometimes that creates a selection that's too selective in my opinion and can sometimes look less natural. But other times it works great. I've occasionally used the same trick for subject detection, but again sometimes that leads to a mask that's too precise. Again, it depends. Great trick though and bizarre that it works. As for brightening the background, that kind of falls into the same category as the contrast selection .... I'm still debating between embracing the foggy nature, or trying to go against it.
One other thing I was considering was possibly ever-so-slightly enhance the already glowing red tail. I haven't done anything with it yet - that's just how the sunlight (what there was of it ...) was lighting it up from behind. But I was thinking that leaning into that might give it a little more oomph.
Love the feedback, thank you to everyone! I welcome all points and counter-points.
