Common Loon

[Paul Lagasi]

I've been weeding though some of my old photos and came across this image from 2005..one of my favourites..for me at least a fitting way to end the year. Lets hope for a lot of obliging birds in 2010.
It's been a great year with BPN.

D70
Sigma 50-500
f6.3
1/1000
handheld
fixed chest area, heavy shadow
no iso in exif

[Joe Senzatimore]

Great low angle and eye contact. Nice detail as well.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the angle and look-back pose. It would be even stronger with the bird angled toward you. I might crop a tad off the top.

[Stephen Stephen]

Paul, very nice. I'm still hoping to get a summer plumage image of a loon. It's nice to see one of your Sigma 50-500mm images.

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

Nice loon here, sharp with good color showing on the neck. Wish pupil was just a bit more distinct, but that is how they look at times.

Might try to do a version with the background selected and the exposure lowered just enough to reduce the bright highlights on the water a bit to reduce their tendency to pull the eye away from the bird.

Merry Christmas

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

I had a minute, and made a couple of small adjustments.

Opened in ACR, and used the recovery slider to get rid of the blown highlights in the whites
Quick masked the bird, brought it up just a bit with curves, then inverted the selection and made a very small downward curves adjustment on the background.

Just an option for you.

[Paul Lagasi]

Thanks everyone..will try some of the ideas..What is ACR?

[Randy Stout]

Paul:

ACR = Adobe Camera Raw. It is the converting software for raw files in Photoshop.

Cheers

Randy

[Paul Lagasi]

LOLOL..I must have been brain dead last night..duh, should have gotten that one...

Randy back in 2005, I never photographed using RAW..still don't use it often even now. I've seen the light, recently though and have been experimenting with RAW and TIFF.
Thanks