About the Image(s)

This Red-shouldered Hawk gave me repeated opportunities over the course of several days as it and its mate were bringing nest materials and food to the nest. Unfortunately, and for unknown reasons, they gave up on the nest and I couldn’t locate their new neighborhood. This one is headed back with a small frog in its beak. (Sony a1ii, 400-800 lens @ 785mm, 1/3200 second, f/8, ISO 1250).

I ran the image through DXO which on some images does a better job than any other way I know to enhance detail and reduce noise. Besides the crop I warmed the image up a tad NIK Effects on one layer, then ran it again for Detail extraction and just painted that effect in on the eye and shadow areas. I find that detail extraction is very useful not for sharpening, but for recovering dark shadow areas without artifacts but it has to be used lightly. I lightened up the frog a bit and finally added a custom vignette.