Breakfast

[Cindy Cone]

Great egret hatchling with regurgitated food.SAAF. It's always hard to get these little guys in uncluttered backgrounds, but I couldn't resist. This was cropped to about 75% of original to get rid of offending branches. Canon 40D, 1/200, f/7.1, Canon100-400 IS at 400, fill-flash.

[Arthur Morris]

Cool pose, excellent BKGR and crop, but too contrasty and whites too bright--the latter most likely due to poor optimization skills but perhaps due to too much flash...

[Cindy Cone]

Probably a little bit of both. I'm just starting to use the flash more. Here's a repost, but it doesn't look I've changed the brightness/contrast too much.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Cindy, I am glad that I did not miss this. I saved the jpeg and saw that there are lots of over-exposed highlights. Manyh times you can save the highlights during RAW conversion. What do you use to convert your RAW files? If you don't see this before Tuesday, e-mail me after 21 June as I will be away till then. Else e-mail Robert O'Toole and he can help you from here.

[Cindy Cone]

Hi Artie, thanks for getting back with me on this. I use CS3 for my raw conversions. I took a look at the original and realized it wasn't too bad, but I went a little crazy with the post-processing ( I think). Here's another repost.

[Arthur Morris]

Much better as far as EXP. The only flashing highlights now are the specular ones on the fish which is fine. I would work really large and eliminate them with the Patch Tool. And still detail in the white feathers on the back of the sleeping bird.

[Cindy Cone]

Thanks again, Artie. I just forgot about the fish. Have a great trip.

[Arthur Morris]

YAW. You do NOT want to underexpose enough during the RAW conversion to eliminate the (oever-exposed) flashing highlights! Doing so would kill the detail in the blacks so the last one was perfect. I was just suggesting patch tooling them out. Thanks for the good wishes.