Peregrine at Creamer's Field

Took Scout for a walk on Saturday evening, and we met a man with a falcon on our way back to the car:

f/2
1/45
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

It was 6:00pm on a very clear evening, and this was right at the edge of what I could do handheld without jumping up to ISO 3200, which is notably worse in terms of noise. I was lucking to get any decent shots of the bird at 1/45sec because it was moving quite a bit as it tore up that pigeon.

Also, it's that time of year. Everything is blue. The actual scene was nowhere near this blue. I tried to improve things in photoshop:

Did I go too far? I'm not sure. But I enjoyed the challenge of trying to make the colors truer while keeping a late evening look. I like the apartment building in the background. I think the shape and the yellow help to fill out the background, and they show that this is an urban scene--that this guy is flying his bird in the middle of town. I think that's important.

Here's the other decent one I got:

f/2.8
1/45
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

Really the only good thing about this photo is the eye contact between the man and the bird. I had to stop down to get enough DOF to have them both in focus, and I knew it would be underexposed. The whole right side of the frame is empty as well, and the background behind the bird is way too busy. Here's the best I could do with it:

Really had to up the exposure to get the detail I wanted on the bird and the gore. Made it square to emphasize the relationship between the man and the bird. There's a diagonal line across the center between their eyes. In spite of the problems, I like this one. Will work on it some more to try to get the evening sky a little better.

Anyway, a good lesson in the importance of carrying your camera and talking to strangers.