Willet

[Juan Tolentino]

I captured this image in Fort DeSoto Park, Florida, with the Nikon D750 Handheld and AF-S Nikkor 200-500mm 1-5.6E ED VR
ISO 400
f5.6
1/800
500mm
Manual Mode
Processed on LR and PS.
cropped <25%


All C & C's will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for looking

JT

[John Mack]

Nice pose on the bird, like the foam in the water.

[Isaac Grant]

Nice pose and light here. Ideally it would be best to not have the foam line crossing the head. Also I feel like the water is a bit flat and does not match the warm and deeper tones of the bird. I would deepen the midtones and apply a little CCW rotation.

[Juan Tolentino]

Nice pose and light here. Ideally it would be best to not have the foam line crossing the head. Also I feel like the water is a bit flat and does not match the warm and deeper tones of the bird. I would deepen the midtones and apply a little CCW rotation.
Thank you for commenting on the image Isaac..I selected the BG only and applied a curve adjustment creating more contrast. Is that what you meant by deepen the midtones? If that's not it, please let me know how you would do it. Thanks again.

[Isaac Grant]

It is very hard for me to know exactly what your water looked like but in my head I have an idea of what the beautiful Florida gulf water is like. I tried to base the water color off of the warmness of the bird. As presented it seemed too dull compared to warm tones of the bird. Did the following.
Selected the background
In levels lowered the mid tones to -94 and the white to 230
Raised the saturation +10
Used NIK Viveza to cool the water and increase brightness a bit
Used Nik White Neuatralizer at 33% opacity to make it a bit more of a deeper blue.

Of course all of this could be done just by messing with the colors more in PS and not using NIK. It is just a quick way to edit and to try and bring out the crystal blue water. Also ran some minor NR on background. Easy to increase or decrease the level of blue depending on what you do. Thoughts?

[Juan Tolentino]

It is very hard for me to know exactly what your water looked like but in my head I have an idea of what the beautiful Florida gulf water is like. I tried to base the water color off of the warmness of the bird. As presented it seemed too dull compared to warm tones of the bird. Did the following.
Selected the background
In levels lowered the mid tones to -94 and the white to 230
Raised the saturation +10
Used NIK Viveza to cool the water and increase brightness a bit
Used Nik White Neuatralizer at 33% opacity to make it a bit more of a deeper blue.

Of course all of this could be done just by messing with the colors more in PS and not using NIK. It is just a quick way to edit and to try and bring out the crystal blue water. Also ran some minor NR on background. Easy to increase or decrease the level of blue depending on what you do. Thoughts?

Thank you for the time you invested on the image Isaac, always appreciated. The image looks a lot better this way and resembles more the RAW picture and the way it was out there when I took it. I did an average blur color correction and that's when the water lost the rich blue. I was so concentrated on the bird that didn't really noticed it until you mentioned it.