Hi im new to all this ive been taking photos of birds for 12 months and love it .I have got 218 different birds so fae and this shot is my favorite. Please let me no what u think .... Cheers ....Besty
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very good Besty, it appears that the sun is behind the bird thereby giving a yellow tinge but it also appears that you may have then enhanced that yellow tinge, you will find many forum members here who prefer untouched or minimally touched pics
Peter
Nice shot, Rbtbest. It's a Wedgie, isn't it? I can easily see why it is your favourite shot, as it is of a majestic creature that is extremely difficult to get close to!
Have you manipulated the photo much? The eagle seems to be surrounded by a halo of lighter sky, and the feathers seem to be oddly coloured (although, this could just be the time of day, everything looks different in the Golden Light of the afternoon, especially raptors).
Pacman, to an extent, I agree with you about preferring unaltered images- they speak more cleanly about the skill of the person taking it. However, photography is about displaying what you saw, and if you have to alter a picture to make it more accurate to your vision, I see no issues with it. For instance, you have a bird flapping around in a tree, with two wings out. But if you only manage to take photos where one wing is clearly visible, I think it is ethically acceptable to to Photoshop another wing in as part of the art of taking photos of birds. Some people have extensive skills with Photoshop (or other programmes), and this level of skill will be visible in the final product, thus making it an 'art'.
Sorry about hijacking your thread Rbtbest, if you want, I will start a thread somewhere else?
Not at all ,thanks for the coments . Yes the sun was behind it and yes it is enhanced a bit but not much , i only picked up a camera 12 months ago and teaching myself ,not easy for a 51 year old but ill get there ...... Cheers
Lachlan, thanks for sharing your views on photographic art; please again read my statement 'you will find many forum members' clearly I was not ascribing that viewpoint to myself; I believe that I have previously stated that my pics are for id purposes, that I have Photoshop but not the time to use it much, I actually get more hung up with ID requests where location is not provided
Peter
To me the “Art of Bird Photography” is the skill of taking a photo of birds in their natural environment and to the best of your ability . (whatever the ability of the person taking the photo might be) I do accept minimal work on a photo, such as cropping or slight sharpening. Other than that , I think the challenge lays in depicting the bird as it is in nature. I want to be able to recognize a bird, like Peter says to identify it. For that purpose I need to see the colours as close to nature as possible.
To me there is no reason to manipulate any photo to the point where the colours don’t resemble reality anymore. Let me say, turning a grey bird into red bird, or a grey bird into a purple one, would not be acceptable to me.
If I would take a photo of a bird and one wing was missing,I wouldn't photoshop it in, (I don't even have photoshop), I would try harder next time to improve my technique, in my view this the challenge of photography.
M-L
Thats such a beautiful photo rbtbest! Even if it's slightly changed, I still think it's great! Well done on getting a wedge-tail, I find it so hard to get a close enough shot of them when they always seem to be flying so high
At least around here anyway
Sorry if I came across as being a bit rude, Pacman, I wasn't aiming the comment at you, it was just a generalised comment to start a discussion. Surely, you don't need such wonderful photos just for ID?
I agree with your comments of making a grey bird red, Araminta, as then the photo would look clearly artificial and not represent what was present in nature. A photograph is a representation of what the photographer saw, and the whole aim of nature photography (as I understand it) is to reproduce an image of what was seen in nature for others. So, if post processing is used to enhance and better represent what the creator of the image saw in reality, isn't it assisting in achieving the goal of taking better photos of nature?
Photoshop is a pain the rear end to use- all those funny dials and controls (especially if you have the full version- I only have elements, but from what I have seen, the full version is nearly indecipherable). Hence, it would be preferable to take a picture of what you see without having to post process it, but if the photo just wasn't quite what you envisaged or saw?
I dunno though. These are just my thoughts, and I would love for some more input from all of you!
Nice pic and great for ID, appears to be a fairly young wedgie with the golden neck area just visible. The halo is always there when an underexposed dark bird is lightened against a light sky. Especially when one uses the shadows/highlights adjustment in Photoshop, though I cannot see any artefacts of that here. That also leaves an obvious "look" to the parts where exposure is increased.
All digital files need some basic post processing to bring out the best in the file, and this is only true if one shoots RAW files, which most people probably do not do as it seems "too much" trouble for them. When shooting jpegs, the camera does the processing and it's far harder to bring out more from an image when only an in-camera generated jpeg is available. As for adding wings, cloning etc, I wouldn't care as long as the person admits to doing those "enhancements" to their image. A lot is possible in Photoshop and with the right skills the results can be deceptively real. Though I always value someone's skill of being able to capture an image as seen/envisaged without excessive post processing work applied.
Best thing you can do RBTBEST is use ONE metering mode (eg Evaluative for Canon or Matrix for Nikon), ONE camera mode (Eg Av for Canon or Aperture Priority for Nikon) and PRACTICE. You need to understand how the camera meters a scene, how the sensor records the pixels, how the noise is introduced and what to do during the capture process to minimize that. You need to work out how to add or subtract light during the capture process. In other words, you should learn to expose digital files to get the best image quality then build on the exposure basics. Sadly, (I am not implying anything particular so this is a very general and pretty true assessment of what I have personally observed for years), but many people pick-up digital SLRs and think they can suddenly take good quality photos. Unfortunately, the digital medium is far more technical than the slide medium that was available some years back and it takes time getting the best out of any camera. And sadly, digital photography is absolutely nothing like slides. You see the LCD it only gives you one brief snapshot. If there is one tool I can suggest you learn, it's the histogram. Understand that and you will be on the way to capture high-quality digital files.
Practice, practice and practice. That is the best thing you can do to improve your photography. Best wishes...
Hi Besty - I think it just all comes down to personal taste/preferences etc I guess, but I quite like what you've done post process & reminds me of similar print I saw not too long ago selling (and selling well I might add
) as wall art. For me, I couldn't give a hoot (or squawk 
) what anyone does or doesn't do to their own personal photo's. But having said that, I agree with a couple of comments above in that it is nice to have a description of the type of bird & know if there was any moderate/major post processing work done on it, particularly for identification/comparison purposes. Perhaps for moderately post-processed shots, post both the original and the final product? Just a thought.
Great shot by the way - I'm impressed you got the whole bird in and the wing tip definition is really crisp (have you ever stood next to a Wedgie? I have, they're truly enormous in "person"
) Kudos to you too for not only starting photography only a year ago (I'm in a similar boat, only started at the beginning of this year) but my hat off to you also for having a go at post processing as well. I tried to post process red eye out of a Tawny's eyes once using a friend's Photoshop - I swear part of my brain melted, never to return, trying to use that particular program...or it could just be middle-age setting in for me 
West Coast Tasmania