Since I'm usually shooting backlit subjects on my morning walks, I use spot-metering. This doesn't work well for subjects in full sunlight. The exposure is right for the bird, but the sky is way underexposed and it's tough to get the color right. At least, for me it is.

I need to pay more attention to exposure.

Not putting this up on Flickr because I'm not pleased with it. Same bird was on the same tree yesterday, but all the shots I got yesterday had a limb growing out of its head. This morning I tried to pay a bit more attention to composition, but it was a busy background no matter what.

I can erase all those limbs, but that poses its own challenges with the sky. I've found it has to be the last thing I do.

This is sharpened in Topaz SharpenAI and I suppose many people might feel as though it's over-sharpened, and they might be right. I'm just still kind of amazed, so here it is. It's not a great photograph, but I love seeing the hawks and I'm still delighted I can get a shot like this, so I'm sharing that joy.

I hope.

(Wherein I discover I haven't updated the AppleScript that exports the image from Photos to the local Images archive for the site. It still exports and posts correctly, because the export template in Tinderbox is pointing to the old folder as well. I'll have to do some repairs to get everything aligned properly again. Sigh.)