Young black skimmer

[allanrube]

I took this Thursday morning at Nickerson Beach as the sun was just coming up. Due to the protected area I could not get the sun at my back. I had to lighten an area at the top of its head. I left the imperfection on the head along with the hint of 2 adults in the background.

I never noticed the yellow under the wings before.

D800 with Nikon 800 lens. !/500 f/10 iso 900. Center focus point.

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[Loi Nguyen]

It's fun to see the baby. Good job on the exposure with the sun not at your back. Was there a reason for the F10? BG was a bit busy and distracting and I think the image could benefit with a more shallow DOF. TFS. Loi

[Ian Wilson]

Interesting capture Allan. Nice early morning light. As you say, not the best angle and it would be nice to see something of the feet. Regards, Ian.

[Joe Senzatimore]

Fine shot here. I have been going to Nickerson for a long time now , so I can relate to the lighting challenges there. You handled this well. I think that the yellow seems a bit too saturated. I have seen this color before , but never this deep.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Pretty neat about that yellow as the adults do get a very subtle yellow was in that area during peek mating season. Nice low angle, the vegetation adds a lot here. Good head angle. Too bad about the merge between wing and head. I'd for sure get rid of the black spot at top right edge, and see if I could tone down some near-hot patches of white. Well balanced comp, nice details.

[Richard Flack]

Nice to see the little chap. Like the low angle. Agree with Loi in terms of less DOF to blur out the BG. TFS Allan!

[Arthur Morris]

Interesting. I have never seen the yellow flanks on a chick of any age....

[allanrube]

Thanks for the comments. I selected the greens and blurred them a bit with gaussian blur. I tried a bit more but it did not look good. I also attempted to get rid of some of the black areas in the bg which were actually oof adult skimmers. To some people it may not appear I blurred it at all. I had used f/10 as I was fairly close to the bird with an 800 mm lens and was afraid of too small a depth of field.

The color, or yellow saturation, increased as I resized the image so I back off on the yellow saturation in PS.

Does this look any different?

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