Red kite

Excellent comp, good eye contact, flight pose and detail. There is a funky green cast under the left wing that probably shouldn't be there. Also, the sky has an aqua cast. Both minor details, easily corrected.

Thanks Phil, I'll pay more attention to the colour casts in future. The Kites were over a grass meadow, so that would explain the greenish cast.

Thanks,

Paul.

i think you did, fantastic comp and detail.

Paul i can see Phils cast but that apart it's a good image.

Keith.

Stunning! Nice to see some cloud detail. I see the cast too. There's a recent debate about such casts on the main site here: http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=66828&CGISESSID=5d9f0d0fc9ac33bd42b0fb92dfbbd730&u=29215

Sorry - can't get the link to work for some reason, but it's under "all topics" posted by Barbara Graham

Thanks for the positive comments everybody. Thanks for the link Ian, I've had a read and tried some of the techniques. I found it difficult to adjust the whole image, so I reprocessed from the raw file again and used a layer mask on the green tinted right under wing, parts of the throat and the left tail feathers. I then desaturated the greens and yellows in those parts only and its removed the cast.

Whoops! Maybe its worth attaching the photo eh? D'oh! Still not sure of the sky though.

Paul
This business about colour casts can drive you mad ! I have had loads of comments on my pics but I am slightly colour blind so can,t see most of them ! After all - does it matter that much !!
AS I have said before - evening and morning light produces a colour cast any way !!
I personally think your first pic is the best . The second has lost some shadow detail anyway. I' drather have a pic with a "cast " as theycall it than no cast at all or a heavily manipulated picture. Lets face it - all digital photography is fake really.
JohnR

Thanks John, I think I've gone mad already!!

Another vote for the first version. Nice sharp eye and good wing position. Have you applied the noise reduction to the whole image, or just the sky? My reason for asking is because the tail looks a bit "smoothed".

Thanks Phil. I double checked the processed image and yes, I did apply the NR to the bird and not the background! The behaviour of Dfine is different to Neatimage or CS5's own noise reduction plugins. It creates a new layer after application, so I should have used a non-inverted mask instead of the inverted one used for sharpening