Red-Tail Fledgling in Flight (Better Large)

Became fortunate, and caught this young one flying from its perch. Not to

sure about its appearance. Can anyone share some words of wisdom

here? Thank you for your time.

-Dave

I am mostly concerned whether I have been too heavy handed in post processing?  I there too much "POP"?

-Dave

I like your nice result, Dave!

The processing looks about right to me. There isn't too much 'pop'.

Thank you for your comments and observations.  Best regards...

- Dave

The image looks sharp and the composition and framing are perfect. But I'm wondering if the underside of the bird has been processed too much, the area  is a lot lighter than I would expect and the detail not quite defined.  This of course could be a result of the angle and placement of the sun, or indeed the distance of the shot, but I wonder if you have used a "fill light" tool that has resulted in this?

Best Regards

Alf

Thank you Alf.  Zero fill light was used.  I did up the exposure by 0.20 but that would give an overall lightening.

Exposure taken 2 1/2 hours after sunrise.  Bird flying about 50 feet over tall dry oat grass, quite blonde in coloration.  Unfortunately, the image is a significant crop.  I will attach the non-cropped / non-processed .jpg for comparison.  I worry that I am exceeding the limits of my data set, causing some aberrant processing.  This is from a 15mp equivalent to a DX in Nikon.  I also dislike all of the blue sky, no frame of reference  to scale, texture, or coloration.

I do not know what caused the additional item in the frame.  there were other creatures zipping around in the area.  I just healed it out of the image.

Please take a look and give me you opinion, I do value it greatly.

- Dave 

Many Thanks for providing the original jpeg, much appreciated.  It would appear that your processing is minimal, I can only detect a certain amount of sharpening in the cropped version. I think the angle of the shot may have also given me the impression of loss of detail in the underside of the bird. Nothing you can do about the lack of sky definition, its one of those things. I think you have optimised the image sensibly. The only thing I could suggest as an addition to your processing is to use the "High Pass Filter" in photoshop. This can sometimes enhance definiton without causing any unwanted effects or saturation, though it can be a bit complicated to use.

Best Regards

Alf

Thank you for your time, efforts, and advice.  I will give the high pass a try.

Best regards...

- Dave