Stretch

[Grace Scalzo]

From Nickerson, Friday evening.

1/1600, f5.6, ISO 400
Canon Mk3 (borrowed, wish it was mine!), 500 f4 + 1.4tc + tripod
(Mr. Jpeg seems to have stripped alot of the details from the underwing and the body, the tiff looks great...any way to make this better in processing? Cropped from the sides. )

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the pose, wing position and eye contact and might give it a tad more room at the bottom and tone down the white feathers some more.

[Raul Quinones]

Great pose and sharpness.
I may try to sharpening the head a little bit more, and may be increase black a bit more and more room all around...

but again great picture.

[Grace Scalzo]

Thanks, guys. Wish I had more room, vertically. That's it. I was standing in a 6 inch deep puddle with someone else's camera and was a bit careful, reluctant to back up or remove my tc, lest I drop it. Axel, how to tone down the whites? Exposure adj, levels, what's the best way? Raul, I assume you mean in levels?
Appreciate your help!!

[Juan Aragonés]

It is a common problem with the files that are exposed to the limit of overexposure, like this one. I am sure that you processed the file to look perfect in the tiff version but when you converted to jpeg the whites became very bright. In my experience, files exposed to the right side of the histogram or files slightly overexposed are the best for a good processing job if the light condition are very contrasting (like this case) because it is very easy to recover the whites and to save a lot of details in the shadows without the problem of noise increase.

When I have one file like this one, I tend to process the tiff slightly underexposed to avoid hot whites in the jpeg conversion.

By the way, I downloaded your image to my computer and CS4 says that you have just 18 pixels in the 255 level (in other words, 18 pixels hot). That is not a great amount of hot pixels, your tern is very bright, but not hot or, in other words, I am sure that would look much better on a print than on a computer screen that, sometimes, are uncalibrated or more bright than they should be

oops, I almost forget to say that love the pose of the bird, the perch and the bicolored BG. A touch of lightening to the eye area would be very nice.
Good job Grace :-)

[Stu Bowie]

I like the extended wing posture Grace, together with the crouched down pose. Super BG too.

[Grace Scalzo]

Thanks so much for the help, Juan, that was just the input that I needed, appreciate it. Thanks, Stuart for your comment, too.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Grace, in this case some S/H (about -15 to 18 on the highlights slider) worked well - you can touch up some parts afterwards with the burn tool set to midtones (even if you are working on highlights) at no more than 6-8% exposure. I tried it and liked the result...and it only took about 45 seconds :-)

Awesome pose and sharpness. Great timing on your part too. I love the perch but only wish to see more of it below - I'm aware that is all you have though.

[LouBuonomo]

I think it is a great capture. Agree you need to watch the JPG conversion, I have a few from TX that have the same issue, RAW/TIFF are fine JPG compression nukes them especially at web sizes.

[Hugh J McLaughlin]

Stunning pose, so well worth going back into photoshop to bring some detail back into the wings, Grace.

[Ramon M. Casares]

Superb pose, great BG, lovely light, detail and colors, I would only suggest to tone down the whites a bit.
Congratulaitons! Loved it!

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Fantastic pose. I like it lots. Did you do any clean up of the BG in front of the head? Or is it perhaps the compression?
Lovely light too. Thanks for sharing Grace. :)

[Grace Scalzo]

Akos, no bg cleanup, but it appears that I should! Thanks everyone, I will rework this one and implement these tips.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Axel, how to tone down the whites? Exposure adj, levels, what's the best way? Raul, I assume you mean in levels?
Appreciate your help!!

A 'quick and dirty' way is using the magic wand tool on the whites, then go to saturation and adjust lightness -2 or -3 points.

[Raymond Barlow]

fantastic pose Grace, I am sure you will sort out the whites with all this good advice.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful pose Grace, loved the wing position in perticular.. just with adjustment as suggested above would make it better.. congrats..

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Grace, Don't make me say it: you gotta read the various saving the whites tutorials in the ER! Best as it says there is to get it right in the field; next best to recover the whites during conversion....

What are you using to convert?

IAC, I selected the whites with Select/Color Range and did a 100% Linear Burn on them (just as it says in the tutorials...) Usually about a 20% Linear Burn (use the Opacity Slider to adjust, just as it says in the tutorials...)

[Arthur Morris]

ps: I also lightened the face with a QM. My only wish is that the bird had landed right on the tippy top of the sand pile. Great pose and head angle.

What caused the sand pile? Was this a vertical ORIG?

[Grace Scalzo]

Ouch! I guess I posted in the wrong place. (I hate being used as a negative example) But thanks for the work. I hope you're happy to see that I did learn some stuff, see the image I posted a couple days later. The sand pile was apparently built by a child. Not an original vertical.