Worn & weathered

[Jake Levin]

A reminder of why birds moult at least once a year: not only do the brighter colours have no effect out of the breeding season, but the feathers themselves start to wear out! The black skimmer was in a group of probably fifty birds, but was isolated enough that a crop to about 80% of the original allowed for an image with just the one bird and no OOF blobs in the background. I would have tried getting a bit closer, but didn't want to risk spooking him and having him go someplace where a single-bird shot would be impossible. The optimization in PS was fairly straightforward; with the crop completed I darkened the eye to remove a bit of a haze from the sky and sun reflections (the head was angled up enough to catch it), did a bit of beach clean-up, and ran a detail extractor on the body. With the brightest whites in at 235 I left the highlights alone.

5D mkIV, 500mm f/4 IS, 1.4x TC III, tripod mount
1/1200, f/7.1, ISO 400

Like it, loathe it, or leave it for later, thanks for looking! (Is there a BPN alliteration prize?)

Jake

[Daniel Cadieux]

Good details in both the blacks and the whites. Perfectly parallel pose looks great with the elongated shape of the skimmer. Sharp, well balanced comp. I'd be OK with the image a we bit warmer overall, but this is beautiful in its simplicity.

[Isaac Grant]

Nice pose here and I like the whole feel of the image. Blacks and whites are well exposed. I'm with Daniel in that I would warm the image up a bit. Also would brighten it a touch (not the whites) and add a touch more black to the blacks. I think that will really make the skimmer stand out more from the sand.

[Arthur Morris]

Ditto all the positives above. I like that you were right on sun angle and that you got pretty low.

with love, artie

ps: is this 80% of the original frame or 20% of the original frame?

[Jake Levin]

It's about 80% of the original. Plenty of resolution to work with on a 5D IV file!

Here's the colour-adjusted version.