Coomon Loon (Winter Plumage)

[Craig Wallace]

This was taken last weeked at Newport Or. a light overcast windy day. Not as good as Dave Leroy's "image of the week Loon".
D2xs 80-400mm at 400mm. iso 400 1/750 at f7.1 aperature-priority, matrix metering, on tripod.
cropped, processed in ACR CS4. Thanks for looking need more comments and suggestions.
Craig.

[Julie Kenward]

Craig, this is a very nice loon image! Two things that I think could make it even stronger:

First, a better angle in the field (get down lower and try to get him eye level to your camera lens) - it will make the portrait feel more personal and give the viewer a stronger connection to the bird.

Second, I'd recrop this to a pano crop leaving about 1/3 of the water below the bird and 2/3 of the water above him. He feels a little lost in here and with his long, thin body I think a long, thin crop would work well. See what you think!

[Craig Wallace]

Julie,Thanks for the suggestions, I can crop the image, which does make it look stronger. I wanted to get lower, but couldn't get lower in the rocks of the jetty.
Craig

[Dave Leroy]

Good looking photo of a loon. Well done.

Good idea about horizontal crops. If mine, I might try to eliminate as much oof water on top as possible and leave a bit more on the bottom. I find the oof water a bit distracting and in focus water appealing.

Dave

[Pete Riola]

You might consider hitting this image with some noise reductions and some contrast too.

[Randy Stout]

Craig:

Good advice above on cropping, shooting angle.
The biggest issue, besides that is the overall softness of the bird, not a lot of detail in the plumage.
This lens is pretty sharp at that f/stop, and the shutter speed was high enough too.
Does this represent a significant crop, or perhaps noise reduction was run on the entire image?

I rather like loons, so always glad to see their images posted.

Cheers

Randy

[Craig Wallace]

The crop is about 50%, I did run noise reduction on the entire image. I use noiseware pro.
thanks for the comments. I like loons also. this is my first oportunity to photograpy a loon. I was pretty excited, my techs were less than desirable.
Craig

[Randy Stout]

The crop is about 50%, I did run noise reduction on the entire image. I use noiseware pro.
thanks for the comments. I like loons also. this is my first oportunity to photograpy a loon. I was pretty excited, my techs were less than desirable.
Craig


Craig:

I have taken thousands of loon pictures, and still get excited every time I go out, so its understandable. They are truly magic, esp. in the summer when they are calling.

I would try a version with no noise reduction on the bird. I would rather have a bit of noise but see the detail in the bird, than what you ended up with.

Good luck, and hope to see more.

Randy

[Craig Wallace]

Thanks Randy.
Craig