Black Fronted Dotterel

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

This adult Black Bronted Dotterel was captured from the bird hide at the Edithvale Wetlands, Melbourne on a Canon 30D with 300mm F4L IS + 1.4X Con. (420mm) 1/400sec, f/9, ISO 800, Pattern metering and manual exposure.

http://birdphotographers.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=3525&stc=1&d=1202070516

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Pretty bird and eye contact. The image looks a bit soft and the whites are overexposed. I would apply some NR on the BG.

[John Cooper]

Hi Chris - one of my favourite Dotterels!! The white plumage on birds can be a problem as you have experienced here, especially around the neck area. I find that selecting these problems areas and inversing the selection before applying Levels or Curves prevents the loss of detail in the whites - that's assuming you have some detail there to start with. This Dotterel would also benefit from a bit more sharpening. Feel free to send me an email if you are having any problems in these areas Chris.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Axel and John, you could not buy the advice that you get here for free, I will experiment and report.

[Ian McHenry]

Beautiful image Chris.
Like the angle of the bird and blurred BG.
Might be worth trying a tiny bit of mid-tone darkening as another option.

[Christopher C.M. Cooke]

Thanks Ian, I kept the original image as both a Tiff and Psd file so I will play around with it and repost.

Thanks again folks, I am new to CS3 and am still working my way through the instructions, (almost finished page 1).

PS Instruction manuals to me is like Kryptonite to Superman.:)