Posted August 31st, 2015

The Hawk and the Sunset

I confess, I did not actually capture this hawk in the scene as you see it here. The hawk and the sunset were two separate exposures made on different days earlier this summer. I had photographed the hawk in mid-afternoon against a bright, milky-white sky. While recently reviewing the images, I found that I could nicely recover the tones of the underexposed subject from the RAW file, but it did not stand up to the considerable magnification that would be needed to produce a pleasing, frame-filling image of the bird. Failing that, the plain white background did not make it a satisfying photo; it begged for a spectacular scene that I could composite the hawk into, and the sunset view of Mount Lorne fit the bill. Of course, some significant tweaking of the colour balance was required to produce a credible match with the much different lighting of the recipient scene.
Pentax K-5, Tamron AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di-II LD @ 50mm (hawk: SMC Pentax DA* 60-250mm f/4 ED [IF] SDM @ 250mm, 1/4000 sec @ f/8, ISO 800)