Kittiwake portrait

[Reynir Skarsgard]

Taken handheld, no crop, minor sharpening in Lightroom.

Canon EOS 7D
Canon EF400mm f/5.6L USM
1/2500 sec
f/8.0
ISO 800

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5298/5583359352_b7e5708e2d_b.jpg

[John Chardine]

Hi! I would like to send a big welcome from birdphotographers.net (BPN) and the Eager to Learn (ETL) Forum. I may be wrong but I think you are our first contributor from Iceland!

I love portraits like this and you've started with a strong first post. The image is sharp and the colours are really good. The background (BG) is neutral and does not take away from the subject.

I can suggest a few things to think about with this image. At the photography stage I would have tried, if possible, to move to that the sun is coming more from behind you than to the extreme left. This would light up the bird more evenly and reduce the contrast between the bright left side and the darkish right side. Also I would have tried to make some images of the bird with the head turned a little more toward you, rather than away. At the post-processing stage, I would give less room behind the bird and a little more in front. This will reduce the feeling that the bird is looking into a wall in front of him/her. Something else you might want to try is lightening the eye to show more detail.

I did my Ph.D. on kittiwakes so they are my favourite bird, and Iceland is one of my favourite places on the planet. We look forward to more images from you.

[Cody Covey]

like already mentioned moving would've provided better light but that can't always be helped. The techs look good. Very beautiful bird good job and welcome to BPN

[Reynir Skarsgard]

Thanks for your comments.

I took this shot on a floating pier and one more step to the left would have put me in the water. This bird was standing on a railing, very calm and sweet. I did take quite a few shots with various head angles but the sun angle gave me some unflattering shadows when she turned towards me. Maybe I should try using fill flash?

Kittiwakes are a favourite of mine as well, they are quite friendly where I live and wonderful photo subjects.

[John Chardine]

Yes, some fill-flash would have worked very well here.

[Desmond Chan]

Fill flash is a good idea. As is, the white in the "forehead" area is blown. I'm guessing the darker background was affecting the final exposure. A white subject under harsh, angled light (side-light in particular) is tricky without some kind of fill light applied to the shadowed area. Also, in post-processing, you may want to adjust the color cast in the shadow areas as usually they would appear with a blue cast on it. It's just the way it is but can be dealt with in post-processing.

I guess you didn't need ISO 800 for this shot :S3:

[Julie Kenward]

Reynir, even though the exposure and angle weren't ideal there are some fixes you can do to make this a lot stronger in Photoshop. Here's what I did to correct some of the problems...

First, you have areas of the white head that were blown out - most noticeable is right above the beak/eye area. If you had checked your histogram in the field you would have notice the blinking that signals the loss of detail in the whites from overexposure. I pulled the image into Camera RAW and corrected the overexposure there; however, this didn't bring back all the detail in that one area and left it still rather stark. I then opened it in PS and used the eye dropper tool to sample an area close to the overexposed area that had detail still in it. That put the new softer white in the FG square. I then grabbed a soft brush tool with the opacity set to around 25% and painted over the blown out whites, causing them to calm down a bit more.

The part that was heavily in shadow I also corrected with the adjustment brush in Camera RAW. I set the exposure to +1.00 and lightly moved over the darker gray areas of the head and neck. It's not perfect but it brought it a little closer to the whites.

Next was the dark eye with little to no detail left. I selected just the eye area and then did an auto curves adjustment. This brought out some funky colors in the eye but lightened it up enough that I could see some detail again. I then used the burn and dodge tools to whiten one area near the top to form the catchlight that was barely present and used the burn tool to darken the rest of the colors so they blended better with the rest of the eye.

Finally, I recropped your image. (You uploaded this at a resolution of 240 - you need to go up to the top of the forum and read the sticky note on how to size your images for the web. They really do fine at a lower resolution of 72.) I took some off the right side and got the eye into the top 1/3 of the horizontal plane so it looked more balanced.

All of this to say that it IS possible to correct an image like this in Photoshop but it's so much easier if you get the exposure right in the field! Here's the final product:

[Reynir Skarsgard]

I guess you didn't need ISO 800 for this shot :S3:

Probably not :S3: I was shooting the kittiwakes flying by and sometimes diving to grab something to eat when this one landed 3 meters away from me. Since I was shooting handheld I wanted higher shutter speed for the flight shots, hence ISO 800.

[Reynir Skarsgard]

Julie, that looks very nice. Not sure about the eye though, the colour looks a little weird. I'll try playing around with it in Photoshop.

[Sid Garige]

Welcome Reynir. Very nice image to start with. Looks like you had to deal with a combination of harsh light and shadows. Better like next time.

-sid