American Kestrel and Red-tail

[johngpt]

Brent, I'm not seeing any significant problem with either blown highlights or blocked shadows.
In image 4, there might be a small area of highlight that seems to not have any data. On our right, under the Kestrel's left eye there is that patch of bright white.

I'm not sure if you had shot in raw, but if you had, you might see if there is data in that area in your raw editor, reducing exposure or highlights. If there is data, you might then edit so that the data becomes more visible without influencing exposure elsewhere in the image.
I won't go into how you might do that edit, as everyone has his/her own preferences.

 

[BrentC]

Brent, I'm not seeing any significant problem with either blown highlights or blocked shadows.
In image 4, there might be a small area of highlight that seems to not have any data. On our right, under the Kestrel's left eye there is that patch of bright white.

I'm not sure if you had shot in raw, but if you had, you might see if there is data in that area in your raw editor, reducing exposure or highlights. If there is data, you might then edit so that the data becomes more visible without influencing exposure elsewhere in the image.
I won't go into how you might do that edit, as everyone has his/her own preferences.

Yeah I know about that area. Exposure wasnt perfect on the shots and had to recovered some highlights. I probably could have singled out that spot to try and recover more. Next time I'm editing I'll see what I can do. I also have a ton of other shots from that time I should go through, might be one with better exposure to start with. But I was shooting at a bad time, around noon.

 

[johngpt]

Yeah I know about that area. Exposure wasnt perfect on the shots and had to recovered some highlights. I probably could have singled out that spot to try and recover more. Next time I'm editing I'll see what I can do. I also have a ton of other shots from that time I should go through, might be one with better exposure to start with. But I was shooting at a bad time, around noon.

Probably just something which points to how OCD I am and you'll probably laugh at me, when I have a spot like that and it ends up not having any information and is truly blown out, I clone data from another part of the image. Sometimes direct cloning works and sometimes I have to use frequency separation (something often used in portrait editing) to get texture into that area.
I've done it for bird feathers and I've done it even more frequently on blown out bits of clouds in landscapes.