Osprey and fish

[Paul Burdett]

Managed this one recently at my local Pier. Minor adjustments in acr and photoshop. Would have liked a better sky, but I'll take an incoming Osprey in any sky:bg3:

D500/500PF, 1,3200th sec@f5.6, iso360, manual mode, hh. Cheers.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Paul ... nothing you can do about the sky , other than playing your tricks :bg3:
I see a possible option for improvement would be channel blending to darken the sky , might look better .
Is this a large crop ?? Asking because I would hope for finer detail and sharpness , but maybe there was already heat haze playing a role .
Watch your halos .....:w3 ..... !!!! Not as obvious but visible ....

The catch is a great addition , cool shot .

TFS Andreas

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

I like the head on view with the fish clearly visible. The classic yellow eyes for the osprey.

Yes the sky is a bit bland. Worth fiddling a bit to darken it a bit.

Cheers

Randy

[Paul Burdett]

Andreas: Thanks as always. Not playing any "tricks" with the sky any more:bg3:...lesson learned there! Not a large crop actually...just a bit less on the sides and top/bottom...maybe heat haze as you say...pretty warm that day. Can't see halos on my monitor, and sharpening was only applied to the head/eyes area. Just checked the raw file again...no halos that I can see.

Randy: Thank you. Will take a look at the sky...not sure if darkening would improve the image though (if so, how/why?)

[Brian Sump]

Haha, I think we can all chuckle a bit about the sky stuff Paul ;-) I do anyway.

Pretty intense glare on this one and that fish looks like he's had better days.

The wrist-up wing position is nice from my perspective as you were able to capture a good bit of the tones on the underside, despite the high sun angle. Because of that, however, the leading edge of the wings are pretty hot and likely blown. It's a small price to pay for exposing a shot like this well.

Even though it's a bright blue sky, there's lots of positives.

[Dorian Anderson]

I think you did pretty well given this bird was slightly overhead. You've avoided distracting/heavy underwing shadows, the two yellow eyes suck us right in, and the fish adds interest and behavioral context. Sky is what it is; you had no control over that. Detail on the bird and fish looks decent but not super crisp to me. But still a nice frame.

[David Roach]

Great intense head on view and you handled the challenging light well, as usual. Like that you got all three eyes. The sky looks natural for this lighting to me. TFS

[Daniel Cadieux]

A simple dodge (above) and burn (below) on the sky adds at least a bit more interest, what do you think? I love the osprey's incoming pose, as well as the fish. Perhaps a touch off the top would work, but OK as is comp-wise as well.

[arash_hazeghi]

It's great that we can see both the head of the osprey and the fish, the image is a bit small on my large monitor maybe that's why it's not showing better fine details

TFS

[Arthur Morris]

Nice repost by Dan. What bugs me is that the face of the Osprey and the face of the fish look quite crunchy/lacking detail as if they have been over-lightened ... In short, lacking and pop.

with love, artie

[Paul Burdett]

Thanks so much everyone for the feedback. I'm not particularly happy with the overall IQ...probably due to the underexposed raw file, and lightening in post.
Dan: Yes, I like what you did here..I would never have thought about doing that. Cheers.
Arash: It's actually only a very small crop, resized to 1600px wide for posting to this forum...not sure why it's small on your monitor?

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks so much everyone for the feedback. I'm not particularly happy with the overall IQ...probably due to the underexposed raw file, and lightening in post.
Dan: Yes, I like what you did here..I would never have thought about doing that. Cheers.
Arash: It's actually only a very small crop, resized to 1600px wide for posting to this forum...not sure why it's small on your monitor?

1600 pixel is tiny on a 4K monitor.... a 4K monitor is about 4000 pixels wide...

[Paul Burdett]

Thanks Arash...I should have known this:e3