Royal Terns

[Joseph Przybyla]

At Ft. Desoto County Park in Pinellas County, Florida, I came upon a group of Royal Terns and gulls. This pair began what appeared to be a courting ritual. About the time one bird was going to mount the other a third Royal Tern forced itself between this pair and each flew off. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm PF, camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/3200 F/8 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 1000 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 500mm (750mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2022 and Topaz Denoise AI
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Sharif Uddin]

Lovely interaction. I like the kissing pose. The blue background works well. Was there a lot of water particles in the air due to breaking waves?

[Colin Driscoll]

Great pose and nicely exposed. There are a lot of masking issues though, particularly around the heads, plus an apparent sharpening halo. A difficult one to cleanly process.

[kevin Hice]

Lovely capture Joe love the ritual of the beaks. Very interesting pose and goes well with the dark background. TFS

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Joe ... superb image content and well captured behavior !!!

I wish you would have processed this with less use of Topaz Denoise . The dark tones looking too flat and the image might go warmer in the WB , just my take .

TFS Andreas

[Joseph Przybyla]

Lovely interaction. I like the kissing pose. The blue background works well. Was there a lot of water particles in the air due to breaking waves?

Hi Sharif, thank you for viewing and commenting. Regarding the water particles in the air, I went back to the master image and looked. There were very few, the small waves were smooth without much surf or breaking waves.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Great pose and nicely exposed. There are a lot of masking issues though, particularly around the heads, plus an apparent sharpening halo. A difficult one to cleanly process.

Hi Colin, thank you for viewing and commenting. Looking at the image I see the area near the black heads that did not mask correctly. I corrected that and will repost.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Joe ... superb image content and well captured behavior !!!

I wish you would have processed this with less use of Topaz Denoise . The dark tones looking too flat and the image might go warmer in the WB , just my take .

TFS Andreas

Hi Andreas, thank you for viewing and commenting. I know why the dark tones look flat, I reduced the black on the subject trying to reveal the eye on the right hand bird. Easy fix and will repost a correction. Here is a edit using Neat Image Auto Profile for noise reduction. I will also post the same image using Topaz Denoise AI using the auto settings. Please let me know what you see.

[Joseph Przybyla]

This image was processed using Topaz Denoise Ai with the same sharpening settings in Lightroom.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Well Joe thanks for your versions ... for sure improved .
Why do they not look the same in terms of brightness and color , if you only changed the NR ????
And the sharpening halos are still there ....

[Dorian Anderson]

Fun image. I always like seeing those orange bills against the blue water. Love how the wings are held as well. It's much more interesting than flat against the back. Masking issue corrected nicely. Still a bit of halo on the black foreheads, but it's pretty minor.

[Kurt Bowman]

Hi Joe, I love the interaction between the terns! I really like the repost much better on the blacks

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, much appreciated.