Dive, Dive, Dive!

[Brian Wong]

Dive, Dive, Dive!

Out practicing what I've be learning at Jim Neiger's workshops.
Your comments really help me learn! Thanks for looking!

EOS 40D, 500 f/4 IS
2,000 f4.5 ISO 400 handheld manual exposure

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Nice pose and details. I wish for more eye contact and the blue looks oversaturated on my monitor.

[Lana Hays]

Brian
Nice placement of the bird....and an amazing wing spread. Given the angle of the bird, I'd say you got as much eye contact as you could. I agree that the blue sky seems a bit too saturated. The detail is very nice and it's wonderfully sharp. I do see some sharpening halos that you might watch out for. Well done.

[Dick Boone]

Wow! Looks like he is sizing you up for lunch. Great capture. Agree about the blue.

God bless.....Dick

[Brian Wong]

Thank you for your comments Axel, Lana, and Dick!

I will work on that over-saturated Blue for improvement. Can you help explain the term "sharpening halos" that I see mentioned on various images ... and what that means? Where do you look for it, where does it come from, and how can one prevent, or work on it? Thank you for your help!

[Lana Hays]

Brian
The sharpening halo that I see is underneath the head and along the wing edge.....a fine light line between the bird and the BG. Sharpening halos are caused when the entire image was sharpened and occurs between light and dark edges. If you have a nice clean BG such as this one it's easy to select just the bird and sharpen it. This avoids the halo and can actually help reduce noise in some images by not sharpening a solid BG. I hope that I've explained this to make sense.....it's easier to see than it is to explain.