Indian Courser - A Portrait

My friend and I have been studying a group of about 15 Indian Coursers for quite some time now. Our initial approach was to just sit near a fixed tree everyday for long hours and now after about 3 months these beautiful birds have become quite used to us. Also, an important point I would like to mention here is that as much as they are used to us they tend to fly away at the slightest disturbance by other people.

Exif Data as below. Shot at 500mm.
Aperture : f7.1
Shutter Speed : 1/1000s
Exposure : Manual
Expo Comp : +0.3EV
ISO : 400
Metering : Centre Weighted

Selective sharpening done to enhance the details. Cropped only slightly for composition and adjusted layers and curves. White balance as shot.

Nice eye contact Divyaraj. Looks slightly high on contrast. Also opening the shadows a bit will help. wud been great if light was from behind you.

TFS
Roopak

Nice portrait. Good eye contact. Agree with Roopak's comment. I think reducing the sharpening a bit would be good. Thanks for sharing.

thanx for your input ! will work on it :)

I agree with Roopak and Mrudul's comments. The eye contact is good. Good to know that they are coming close. To get this close up with a 500mm means the birds have to be really close. However, there are sharpening artifacts in this image and the details are also less. So I wonder about the amount of crop in this image. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

I haven't cropped it much but I did apply selective sharpening ! so I guess its due to that..ne ways thanx for the input :)