Osprey in flight

[Bill Dix]

I know osprey shots are a dime a dozen, and this one has some issues: harsh uneven light and 50% crop. But I did like the way the sunlit head is framed by the wings. He was hanging out at Brigantine back in August, in a nest with several of his offspring, and occasionally making brief flights to establish his presence to anyone who cared.

D90 | 80-400 VR @ 400mm | ISO 500 | 1/3200s @ f/7.1 | -0.7 EV | HH braced on car window.

[Geoff Warnock]

Hi Bill, the pose and composition are really nice. I guess you had to work hard to get the detail out of the underwings so it's a shame that they look quite noisy.

[Mark Young]

I'm not sure what you could've done to get more detail and light underneath here. Perhaps rather than removing -0.7ec, you instead add a bit more exposure so that there was more light underneath, and tried to regain the crown in PP which would've been overexposed?

[Julie Kenward]

I love the pose/wing position here Bill. It is a shame it's a 50% crop because it's so well "posed". I've never worked with a better beemer but that might have been an option to get more light under the wings. Only other option would be to wait until he was in a different position from a lighting standpoint and try again.

You sure did a great job of freezing the action and pinpointing the sharpness on his eye!

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Nice composition and wing position. Ospreys may be sort of a dime a dozen, but good images of them are not at all. High contrast (harsh light) is extremely problematic, especially with ospreys, and likelyhood of getting a good well exposed image is very low. I have had such a lack of success I don't even try any more, and wait for clouds or overcast. My only approach in this situatation would be expose for the dark underside, which would reverse the -.07EV to +.07EV or even higher. You essentially will be sacrificing the whites, but you will have detail, and much less noise with the rest of the image. Recovery of the whites, which actually are a very small part of the image, is sometimes possible with recovery slider/curves adj in RAW, with multiply and other merge modes in PS after selecting the areas with the color range command, as well as burning and use something like Topaz Detail on only the clipped areas. I'm sure BPN has bulletins on the subject. regards~Bill

[James Shadle]

Bill,
This is how I handle Osprey in this kind of light.

Find and white sand beach or light colored pier. The sand or pier act as a reflector.
You can then expose for the head and still have a decent exposure under the bird.

The best case is a sandy beach and the bird looking straight down at you!

James

PS I found a place that used lime rock (white - white) for parking lot next to an Osprey nest;). It was awesome.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all for the good advice. Harsh light is a killer, I agree. The other option here at Brigantine, where there is no sandy beach, is to go very early and hope they bank so the low sun catches their underwings. So far I haven't succeeded, but I'll keep trying.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Bill; I am in agreement with early or late catching banking shots, but I have seen high contrast light (harsh light) even at those times of day, and the banking pose is more or less hiding the shadow behind the bird. This is the primary reason why the advice is given to position the light at the back of the photographer. It is a trick to hide the shadow behind the subject. Even with hidden shadows the light is still high contrast, and the biggest problem, the camera sensor not being able to capture the full range of luminosity, exists. Too bad, but there aren't too many alternatives. Yes, I know about fill flash, but there are alot of problems with this approach as well, and distance to subject just one of them. One of the biggest problems is that a flash is just another high contrast light source. Certainly a flash can use diffusers, and in macro work it is highly effective, but highly diffuse light does not travel far.The use of a flash to add high contrast light to a low contrast situation is where it excells.
Fortunately, since the sunlight has a greater distance to travel through the atmosphere early or late in the day it is more likely to encounter a diffusing element; not only clouds, but dust, smoke, water vapor, or some other particulates. Also some light can bounces off layers higher in the atmosphere, back down to the surface, but again it is dependant on particulates, clouds, water vapor or what I call atmospheric mediators.
The use of the sand of beaches as a "reflector and diffuser" is indeed a good one for a number of birds in high contrast light situations, and I imagine the white sands in Florida are particularly good. However, in my experience, Ospreys are not beach birds, and primarily fish further inland. Another option is using the water surface to reflect light back up to and illuminate the underside of birds. Unfortunately this does not diffuse the light, and is not only is it still high contrast, but the waves create bright bands of light that are not necessarily a good thing.
Here on the upper Texas Coast we have had close to three weeks of cloudless skies, which is highly unusual, and since its been terrible for avian photography, I haven't been out much taking pictures of birds. I've had plenty of time to think of high contrast light, and how terrible it is! regards~Bill