Forster's Tern

[Indranil Sircar]

Taken a few days ago.. I was tracking the tern as it took off. the settings were -

40D, Sigma 50-500mm @ 500mm
1/1600 sec, f/8 Mode: Av Metering: Evaluative Exp comp: +1/3 ISO: 400

Applied small s/h and usm. The light may be a bit harsh but would like to get feedback. Also, does this wing position work. All C&C welcome.

[Sinh Nhut Nguyen]

Image is great, I like the pose, exposure is pot on. I would consider clonning out the dark area on top, that'll give a clean split bg :) :)

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the dynamic pose and eye contact. I wish the bird were flying towards you and agree regarding removing the dark area in the upper left.

[Randy Stout]

Indranil:

re: wing position. I actually like the wing position a lot, just not coupled with this light angle/harshness. On an overcast day, I think it would be very nice.

Agree with Axel re: angle in frame and with both Axel and Sinh are: dark area at top.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

The wing position is killer good. The head is unfortnately angled away. I believe that the light is decent but that the image as presented is simply too light. An easy fix. Let me know if you need help.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

ULC and too bright, agreed. While HA is not ideal, it is nicely separated by its tonalities regardless. Great wing pose. Congrats on a fine image that can be a lot finer with a little fine tuning. :)

[Morkel Erasmus]

wing position is gorgeous. I agree with taking the dark patch top right in the BG out. nice exposure! agree with Artie to town down the lightness a tad?

[Indranil Sircar]

Thanks to all for the feedback and suggestions. Here is a repost with the change in the bg and toned down light...

[Arthur Morris]

Indranil, There is good news and bad news. The good news is that the repost is better (but not dark enough. I created the repost above from your repost, darkening it in Levels and doing a Linear Burn on the whites. The really bad news is that there were many over-exposed pixels.... Many.

How do you convert?

[Indranil Sircar]

Artie, thanks for showing the way. I used CS4 ACR. I used tone curve to open up the black and reduce some over exposed whites. I guess this is where the problem is.

[Mital Patel]

thats truely a killer look and form presented here and i would sure go with artie's re-post. gives more +'es

[Stu Bowie]

The forward extended wings look great, and your repost works so much better. Good work on the eye, and I like the two tone BG.

[Arthur Morris]

Artie, thanks for showing the way. I used CS4 ACR. I used tone curve to open up the black and reduce some over exposed whites. I guess this is where the problem is.

Not exactly. It is likely that you did not have the Highlight warning (box) activated. This you did not use the Recovery slider.

I urge everyone to visit this thread in Educational Resources: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21309

More than half of the images that I open in Photoshop feature over-exposed pixels and 95% of the time the highlights were easily recoverable....

Go to the ER, reconvert by following the instructions, work the image, and then repost it :) :D :)

[Mark Dumbleton]

Love the pose here! Like the dual-coloured BG. Repost from Arthur looks good. Keep up the effort!

[Indranil Sircar]

Hi Artie, thanks once again for the suggestions. I re-worked using recovery and then used level. Here is a repost...

[Arthur Morris]

YAW Indranil, The repost is much better. There are still about 10 hot pixels so you could have gone a bit more with the Recovery slider and with the Exposure slider (to the left).

For this repost I did some Selective Color and Curves work as well as some Eye Doctor work, all as described in Digital Basics.