American White Pelican

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image of a American White Pelican at Lake Morton in Lakeland, Florida. Most winters/spring a pod of White Pelicans spend a couple months at the lake. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED, camera and lens supported by a monopod
1/500 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 180 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 195mm
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2020 and Neat Image for noise reduction when needed
Cropped from 2x3 to 4x5 for composition and presentation

P.S. Learn more about Lake Morton in the BAA Middle Florida Photography Site Guide that Artie and I co-authored. It is available at this link The BAA Middle of Florida Site Guide (https://birdsasart-shop.com/the-baa-middle-of-florida-photographic-site-guide/)

[Bill Dix]

A lovely portrait, Joe. With the bird this close, a smaller aperture might have brought more of the lower plumage into focus. But the bill is nicely parallel to the plane of focus, and has wonderfully sharp detail from nail to eye, and that's the part that matters.

[dankearl]

Nice portrait,, I like the blue at the bottom a lot and nice details on the bill.

[John Mack]

Nice detail in those whites. I like the framing and the pose. The very soft gradient is nice.

[Brian Sump]

Joe, really like the framing and the details are very good.

For me just a tad much blue in the whites? At first thought maybe it was from the water reflections but it's on top of the body and back and top of head... at least on NEC monitor.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Joe, really like the framing and the details are very good.

For me just a tad much blue in the whites? At first thought maybe it was from the water reflections but it's on top of the body and back and top of head... at least on NEC monitor.

Hi Brian, thank you for viewing and commenting. Not sure what the blue is that you are seeing. There was a tint of blue in the shadow areas that I thought was too strong so I masked them and reduced the saturation removing most of the blue. I just checked in Lightroom and the RGB are very close to all being the same. I have a Eizo display which is made for photo editing as is your NEC. I have calibrated it within the last couple days. Shadows do have blue tones which show on white birds more than other birds. Where the blue in the shadows is natural it is always a question whether or not to remove it. I just don't see much blue on my screen.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, much appreciated.

[Brian Sump]

Hi Brian, thank you for viewing and commenting. Not sure what the blue is that you are seeing. There was a tint of blue in the shadow areas that I thought was too strong so I masked them and reduced the saturation removing most of the blue. I just checked in Lightroom and the RGB are very close to all being the same. I have a Eizo display which is made for photo editing as is your NEC. I have calibrated it within the last couple days. Shadows do have blue tones which show on white birds more than other birds. Where the blue in the shadows is natural it is always a question whether or not to remove it. I just don't see much blue on my screen.

Fair enough Joe. I have a tree swallow with quite a bit of blue in the shadows. I actually think it's pretty but I'm still gonna drop the blues in those areas to get it white.

Don't let it take away from a great shot. You did well as far as I'm concerned :-)

[Joseph Przybyla]

Fair enough Joe. I have a tree swallow with quite a bit of blue in the shadows. I actually think it's pretty but I'm still gonna drop the blues in those areas to get it white.

Don't let it take away from a great shot. You did well as far as I'm concerned :-)

Hi Brian, just a thought. Have you calibrated your new NEC display? If so what did you use?

[Brian Sump]

Hi Brian, just a thought. Have you calibrated your new NEC display? If so what did you use?

For sure, it came with Spectra view 2 calibration hardware. It said that it was already calibrated from the factory but I performed an additional calibration as well the day I set it up