Soft Light... Hard Breeze...

[David Roach]

Another from early morning at Anhinga Trail. Wispy clouds on the eastern horizon at sunrise gave a very nice soft light. There was also a consistent breeze causing the plumage on this beauty to sway left. I moved as far left (within constraints of boardwalk) and got down (between slats) to get most of the body above the horizon/plant line.
1DMKIIN 100-400 ISO 800 F5.6@1/640

[Randy Stout]

David:

It sounds like you worked this situtation to get everything it had to give.

The exposure is good, I like the head angle, blown plumage.

It might tolerate just a bit more USM on the eye and face.

Getting the bird above the horizon as much as possible was a good move. The lower background is a bit busy, and I might do a little selective pruning of some of the smaller twigs and branches that go between the birds legs.

The thought you put into maximising your setup at the time, will really help when that real killer oppourtunity presents itself.

Cheers

Randy

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the pose, setting and eye contact. Yes to a bit more sharpening and I would remove the diagonal branch behind the bird. Did you clone this incompletely?

[David Roach]

Hi Axel, no cloning in this image. I finally figured out, the busier the image (like my GBH nesting images ie the nest part) the lower the quality of the jpg (medium or below) to get below 200K. One effect of the lower quality is to lose some sharpness. The original is sharp however.

[Lance Peters]

Hi David - when you are reducing the size are you using Bicubic sharper?

[David Roach]

I reduce to size for web while still in tiff and then the last step is to sharpen. Once sharpened I save as jpg. It is that step, conversion to jpg, where the quality is being lost. For busy images, you can only get medium to low quality at 200K. For cleaner images, they always can be converted to high or max quality. Hope that helps.