Am. Coot

[Taylor Yeager]

Took this today while letting a friend borrow my 100-400. He has been interested in photography so I took him out to a few places. He was kind enough to let me get this image with my lens mounted on his 10D.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/salsataco/CRW_0142_amco.jpg

Location: Jamaica Pond, Boston MA

Canon 10D and 100-400 @ 400
ISO 200
1/180 f8
Handheld



Thanks
~Taylor

[Jim Poor]

Really neat composition with the rock at one sweet spot and the head of the coot in another. The raised foot (Coot feet are really cool!) adds to it as does the drip off of the "toe."

The side lighting is a little tough and the bright side seems a little overly bright on my monitor. I don't know if its the lighting or just something new to me, but I've never seen coot that is this gray overall. But there is a LOT that I haven't seen :D

Did you have to lighten the image to bring out the dark side of the bird?

[Taylor Yeager]

No, that's the color. Although now that I am on my laptop the image looks a bit cooler and brighter. I probably need to calibrate this computer or the other. Does this look on the cool side?

Instead of lightening it up I selected the eye from another image and painted its color onto this one.

Taylor

[Jim Poor]

Yeah, when I measure it, the B comes out about 8 points higher than anything else even on the bird.

I learned a trick from someone on another forum for neutralizing casts really easy in PS.

Duplicate the BG layer, select Blur > average, Then add a Levels adjustment layer to the blurred layer. Select the midtone eye dropper and click on the blurred layer. Then you turn off visibility of the blurred layer to see the difference. Some people lower the opacity of the adjustment layer to 50% or so to lessen the effect, but I find that if I like it I like it all the way in most cases.