Flying - finally

[Randy Stout]

This loon was imaged on a northern Michigan lake. Loons have the highest wing loading of any flying bird, and have to really work to become airborne. They often run a long ways across the water to get up, and it always seem as if they will run out of lake before they make it. Despite the long runs, it seems like they always take off away from you! Not true, since they really need any lift from the wind they can get, but it is amazing how seldom they take off towards you. I suspect if they know they would have to fly towards you to take off, they will swim away underwater and take off from a different spot.

In this case, another boat spooked this loon quite a ways from me, and he figured he could get up before he got near me. Well, not quite, I am happy to say.

D700 500mm f/4 at f/6.3 1/2000s ISO 800 -.3 EV pedestal mounted in the Loonatic (my boat)

Post: NX2 USM curves, noise reduction on trees,

the texture in the trees makes it look like noise, but I think it is from the leaves. I did run noise reduction to reduce this effect. I could blur it further, but when trying, it looked unnatural.

The hot spots on flank and wing are from reflections off the water. I pulled them back in post, but some detail was lost there.

Advice welcomed as always

Randy

[James Salywoda]

Nice wing position and details Randy I sure would love to get one of these in flight someday.... The hot spots look as if they could use some more tweaking (to tone them down some more) Other then that its a great shot.

[Steve Canuel]

Congrats Randy. I can't recall ever seeing a flight image of one of these. Really like the position of the wings, head, and feet.

[denise ippolito]

Randy, Really nice to get one of these in flight! Does it need a slight rotation? I love the position of the feet and the way the neck is fully extended. I bet the captain of the Loonatic went home happy that day!!:)

[Doug Brown]

Congrats Randy. I've gotten only one encounter with a Loon in flight, but it was memorable! Agree with Jim's suggestion about toning down the whites a bit.

[Jim Fenton]

Hi Randy...

I've tired this with loons and haven't been able to accomplish it yet...so congrats :)

The "noise" stuff is puzzling and I don't think it's the leaves as it is evident in the OOF water areas as well on my monitor. There wasn't any early morning steam or heat shimmer coming off the water was there?

Agree with the others on the whites being hot.

[Brian Barcelos]

All around sharpness is great and beautiful win position. Nice detail top and bottom of wings. I'm also a little confused with the "noise", it looks odd. Congrats on a great capture.

Brian

[Randy Stout]

Thanks everyone for the comments. I tried several techniques to further darken the whites on the flank, and although it was very easy to dim them, I thought every attempt tended to make them look worse. I am certainly open to suggestions on how to improve them.

The noise is a puzzler. The D300 at that ISO 800, in an image that isn't underexposed, usually gives very little noise, in fact I rarely even have to think about any sort of noise reduction under those circumstances

I may revisit the noise reduction again.

Thanks again for all your input.

Randy

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Awesome to see a BIF of these guys. :)
Re: rotation, why not try to see how leveling the far bank would make it look? I am OK as is, but since folks mentioned it, it would not hurt to try.

[Randy Stout]

Akos:

I actually did level the far bank. The original had the head much more level, but the bank was clearly rotated CW. The deceptive thing for this bird is that they fly with their head/neck drooped down well below level with the body, so they always look like they are flying down hill. I will check it again to see if I overshot, but the far bank looks pretty close to me.

Cheers.

Randy