Young Piping Plover

[allanrube]

I don't know the age of this bird but it is older than I hoped to find. However, my main concern is the cloudy condition I found when I arrived at the beach an hour before sunset. These were taken at 1/400 5.6 at iso 1000 due to the darkening sky. Nikon D300 400 2.8VR with 1.7 tc.

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/325524295_Utbry-L.jpg

[Jody Melanson]

I wondered why I couldn't see the thumbnail.....please only post one photo in your post, Allan. You can do a retouch or something and reply with it further in the thread. Thank you.

Cute little guy! I like the low angle, and soft muted colours.

Was this a big crop? Or did you run some noise reduction on it? There is a bit of a halo around the beak.

[allanrube]

Thanks - sorry for posting more than 1 image.

Here's a question - this wasn't a big crop and I did not use nr. When I processed the raw file I added a bit of usm in Nikon NX - 50-5-9. When I finished I brought it into PS where I made a few adjustments - added saturation and contrast. When I resized I added a bit of sharpening but I think the halo was there even before that.

Does sharpening add halo?

[Jody Melanson]

Thanks - sorry for posting more than 1 image.

Here's a question - this wasn't a big crop and I did not use nr. When I processed the raw file I added a bit of usm in Nikon NX - 50-5-9. When I finished I brought it into PS where I made a few adjustments - added saturation and contrast. When I resized I added a bit of sharpening but I think the halo was there even before that.

Does sharpening add halo?

No problem re: extra photo.

Yes sharpening sometimes adds a halo. What you can do is hit Q for Quickmask in Photoshop, use a black brush to select inside the bird. Hit Q again to leave Quickmask Mode. CTRL + Shift + I to invert the selection. Then sharpen. You will only sharpen the "inside" of the bird and not the edges where the halo shows up.

I use Canon and am not familiar with Nikon NX. Make sure it doesn't add any sharpening. It could be introducing the halos. Also if you adjust the exposure too much, this will also introduce halos.

[Stephen Stephen]

Nice image here Allan. Jody has offered some good advice.

I might also suggest some clockwise rotation of this image as well. At the current angle the water should have run out of the depressions in the sand.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great capture and eye contact. Jody gave you excellent advice and I would add that you could run some NR on the BG.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Sweet image Alan . Ditto all of the above suggestions. You handled the difficult lighting well and many thanks for sharing.

[allanrube]

Here is a version - straightened and with bg noise reduction. Sharpening was minimal but there is still some halo?

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/325816227_NqhGe-L.jpg

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The BG looks much better but I would sharpen the bird more. Just make sure you don't select pixels around the bird to avoid halos such as the one around the beak. If the original is RAW you could also apply some color noise reduction in the RAW file.

[edward saltau]

aaawwwwww sooo CUTE!!!! lower angle is all i'd ask for! i just wanna hug him...

[allanrube]

Thanks Edward.

I re-worked it a bit more - just some sharpening of the plover - hopefully avoiding halos:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/327350734_94zYK-L.jpg