Black Skimmer in dunes

[allanrube]

Shot about 2 weeks ago at Nickerson Beach. It was afternoon and the skimmers were flying over the dunes. Most were flying a bit towards me and then banking before landing near where they took off from.

D300s with 600VR. ISO 320 1/1600 at f/8

97606

[Clemens Vanderwerf]

Allan, Nice banking pose. Ideally would like to see a more OOF softer bkgd. I would also crop more tight and make it a real vertical (leaving more room in front than behind of course).

[Nancy Bell]

Very nice lighting on the skimmer and you actually get to see his eye! I do agree with Clemens about the bkgd. Maybe try a slight blur. Also a vertical crop would show less bkgd and put more emphasis on the skimmer.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Alan, excellent banking pose and underwing details. Fanned tail always looks nice. Pity the BG was so close to the bird. Not sure what the shooting distance was...but a wider aperture could have perhaps helped smooth out the BG a bit more.

[allanrube]

I will try another crop and softening the bg but at the moment the bg doesn't bother me. Thanks for the comments.

[gail bisson]

Very nice image. I agree with all of the above comments!
gail

[allanrube]

I cropped it easily enough but I have a terrible time selecting and then blurring the bg. Whenever I try it , no matter how accurately I think I select the main object and put it in another layer, when I blur a bg I get bleeding into the selection. Any suggestions?

http://www.allanrube.com/Other/Forum-2011-2/i-hZHRW3f/0/X3/BCA3300-2-X3.jpg

[Luis Villablanca]

I like the repost a lot. I assume you didn't blur the background on this one, right?
Somehow, now that the crop is tighter the background doesn't bother me anymore, unlike the original image where I found it distracting.

Regarding the bleeding problem, the only decent way I've found to blur the BG is by using NR instead of using gaussian blur.
It also helps feathering the foreground selection a few pixels.
--
Luis

[Nancy Bell]

I also like the repost very much. The bkgd is not much of a problem here. Another possiblity on the bkgd is to tone down the greens a bit, that would cause them to recede from one's vision and focus more on the skimmer.

[allanrube]

Thanks Luis and Nancy. I used nr and darkened the bg (greens and yellow.) This will be the last repost here but if anyone has ideas let me know. I like to learn.

http://www.allanrube.com/Other/Forum-2011-2/i-scsG6KJ/0/X3/BCA3300forum-X3.jpg