This afternoon I came downstairs with Pumpkin (my parrot) and I saw a flash of something out the kitchen window. A tiny Sharp-Shinned Hawk had just landed on one of our plant hooks, hoping for a finch or junco to fly up to one of our bird feeders for a snack. My camera was right there so I grabbed it and started taking pictures while Pumpkin proceeded to crawl from my hand up to my shoulder and down the other arm to my camera...silly bird! After about a minute the hawk flew off and it was then I realized to my horror that I'd left the ISO at 1000 from this morning!! I was taking pictures of the sunrise and needed the higher ISO because I didn't have time to set up a tri-pod...and I didn't set it back. DRAT AND BLOODY H...well you get the drift! When I looked up, the hawk was back again! However, this time it was on a pole about 20 feet further away. I lowered my ISO and got a bunch of pictures, but when I compared all the shots on my computer, the best pair were with the high ISO...go figure!

Anyway, I had to deal with a lot of noise and you'll see it in the wings, but I was able to alleviate most of it. This picture is another example of having a separate layer for the bird and another for the background. The background is smooth and noise-free and has only a bit of tint in it with soft vignetting. The bird has only as much noise reduction as I could get away with before I started losing too much detail. I then applied a light detail filter.

Charles Robert Darwin, (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Wikipedia: Charles Darwin

Explored on Flickr on February 27, 2013. Highest position: #85.