Tropicbirds

[Ian Cassell]

Galapagos Islands

Canon 7D
Canon EF70-200 f/8 @ 230mm from panga
1/640 sec f/7.1 ISO 800
Highlights in Nik
Crop for comp, levels, sharpening in CS6

[dankearl]

Neat birds and congrats on a Galapagos trip...
The photo looks coarse to me, a big crop?

[Marina Scarr]

How amazing it must have been to witness and photograph this pair, and I have a feeling they are nesting in these rocks...would love to know for sure. It's awesome to see them both in the rocks and you have managed to get the entire tail in the image. As Dan mentioned, the image is looking very course. Could you tell us a little about your crop, whether the image was underexposed, etc.? Maybe you'd like to post the original?

[Bill Dix]

Most images of this species have them in flight. It's interesting to see these beauties nestled in the rough rocks. I'll agree that it seems like a very large crop with perhaps some over-sharpening.

[Daniel Cadieux]

From the focal length posted I imagine this is close to FF so the IQ may be attributed to processing or resizing? Pretty neat look at something we do not see very often. I like the space you gave to the long trailing tail feathers.

[Ian Cassell]

Thanks for commenting, folks. The crop is not a huge one and I'm not quite sure where I messed up. The light was tough and the white birds on the dark BG were a challenge. I may have overdone my PP. I've reworked it a bit -- backing off on sharpening and dropping the highlights a little. Is this better?