tug 'o sand lance

[annmpacheco]

After a minute of whether or not the male was going to hand over the fish, the female took several stabs at it as they both precariously balanced themselves atop this rock. Eventually the common terns did not share, the male gained possession and flew off.
Cleaned up the white wash on the rocks, increased exposure .25, brightened the blacks and gave the image some temperature warmth.

1Dx
600mm II
iso 2000
6.3
1/2000

[Mike Poole]

Great timing on this shot Ann, both on the handover and the wing positions. I'm wondering if you could maybe accentuate the catchlights in the eyes, my add a bit of extra sparkle to the shot.

Mike

[Alex Becker]

Very nice Ann. Absolutely love that we can see all three eyes clearly! On that note, I agree with Mike that bringing out the catchlights could strengthen this shot. IQ looks good. Really nice behavioral shot. TFS

[David Salem]

Funny caption Ann! Love the poses and the action captured. The fact that we can see the fishes eye well is a huge bonus.

Looks like shooting conditions weren't perfect by any means but it looks like the image was underexposed at capture, or at least for the way I would try expose it. I think you and I talked a little bit about this fact and this species last year. Even in cloudy conditions I like to have 10-15% of the tern blinking on my highlight alert, and maybe more after looking at some test frames at 100%. As I mentioned before, one of the more important facts about exposing Terns well is making sure we can see the black eye well amongst that back cap. Not always that easy but you almost always want to shoot these guys a bit hot IMO.
Your blacks are solid. No way to extract anything except noise from this one. But as is usually the case, your whites look great.
Try to expose for both darks and lights equally to their ratio of the subject. 10-15% of the bird is black, blinkies on 10-15% on the lights. Otherwise the darks will be severely underexposed. It's as bad as blowing out the whites, might be worse with this species because the head and eye is black.
Now you have actually exposed both colors moderately, not perfectly. Then some tweaks in LR & PS to bring the lights down a little and the darks up a little and then your done. At least it's as best as I can figure. If the bird would just sit still for a few seconds you could shoot a bracket or HDR and combine the exposures for the perfect shot, but thats not going to happen:e3

Well done Ann

[David Salem]

I looked for a Tern shot that wasn't in nice light and depicted the things I just mentioned. This is not an image that I would normally process but I decided to do it so you could see what I am talking about. This was shot in crappy conditions and at higher IOSs. Probably ISO2000 like your shot. This had 20% of the bird blinking on the highlight alert. Not killer but acceptable. We can see some detail in the black head and the eye is visible
I want to clarify that at least on Canon cameras, the highlighted blinking areas are not actually totally blown, well over 255, they are showing you that you are close. In some instances I have areas that are completely blown with no detail, but it's rare, and rare that I can't get it back if exposed the way I mentioned.
It's easier to clone a small part of the Tern or Rushing Grebe that is blown as opposed to trying to get detail back in blacks that are heavily blocked. I hate noise.
The second frame was shot in much better conditions but with the same exposure theory, 10-15% of the whites were blinking.

Hope this helps

[annmpacheco]

Wow David, Thank you again very much for all of your time, skills, and explanation, along with the above posts. I will remember this over and over again next time I'm shooting terns. I also will remember that the blinks on Canon are "close" to 255, but not toast... Soon off to puffins, where i will test these skills again... I will post another tern and hopefully the exposure will be ?"perfecto"...

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Great timing, Ann. Like the tugging action and the story accompanying. Perfect backdrop for these beauties.

Geoffrey




http://http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (http://http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)

[gail bisson]

Hi Ann,
Just wanted to FU on my comments via text from the other day.
Lovely action depicted but the blacks are blocked. Good advice from David.
Gail