Puffin at Machais Seal Island, Gulf of Maine, New Brunswick

[annmpacheco]

7D 100-400mm @310mm ISO 400 f5.6 and 1/800 manual full frame no crop

First time to this nesting seabird colony this summer. Okay, puffin nirvana... This guy was a near arm's length away from inside the blind. I did the basic sharpening in PS and some fill light to reduce the neck shadow. I would like to send this one off for print and frame, y'know so I can look at it and count the days till I return! Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm not certain as to what I should do next, given my minimal PS skills. Thanks, Ann

[jack williamson]

Ann this is a very good puffin portrait. It is a slightly different angle than I am used to seeing and I like it. There is something about the eye and the area right around it that looks like it needs some attention but I am going to let Kerry Perkins or John Chardine give you technical advice. The Bg is super.

Jack

[Kerry Perkins]

Ann, you have a wonderful capture and pose here - love the eye contact and intimate portrait. You have nice feather detail and great color balance. What would really improve this one for me (especially for printing) would be to lighten the left side of the face to be as bright as the other side which we can see a bit of. This is pretty easy in PS using the dodge tool set to highlights and/or mids. Use a low flow (10% or less) and a large, soft brush to bring those whites up a bit. This will help the dark eye area also. I would also crop a little from the right or move the bird over in the frame if you have the canvas. You could evict the bright white specular highlights on the bird for a final touch. Really nice! :5

[John Chardine]

Hi Ann- Love it. Beautiful colour and exceptional sharpness. You had great light so the dynamic range is relatively low and the eye is not underexposed like it usually is. I like the eye as is. It looks natural to me (having seen 100,000s of puffins over the years!). I think Jack is reacting to the fact that as I said, in bright, contrasty lighting situations, if you expose for the light cheek feathers, the eye is often underexposed and shows little detail. I would try a crop with some off the right to de-centre the bird some. I think a more eye-level camera-angle would be preferred.

[jack williamson]

After just reading Johns' post I went and looked at other puffin images and sure enough most of the eyes were not as 'exposed' as yours is, I can see detail in yours that I could not in the others.

Jack

[Rachel Hollander]

Ann - beautiful puffin portrait with excellent detail and a pleasing bg. It will look great on the wall. I agree with a little off the rhs and the other suggested tweaks will just take an already great image over the top. Big congrats on this one.

TFS,
Rachel

[Phil Ertel]

Hi Ann,

First, I like this image. Nice head angle with good details. Puffins are great subjects.

To answer your question on post processing, this is what I would suggest. Remember it is your image and these are only suggests based on my personal preferences. I hope you don't mind my taking your image into CS5 and making this edits. I thought it might be more helpful to show you what I did.
I agree with the others. would crop some off from behind the bird to just behind the neck to place the eye close to the rule of thirds. This resulted in a squarish crop. Many do not like square crops so I tool some I took a bit off the top again to keep the eye close to the rule of thirds.
The image looked a little washed out on my screen so i used a curve layer to bump of the contrast.
I created a dig and burn layer and lighten the face and darken a spot or two of the blacks.
I used a color layer and paint over the bright spot in front of the beck.
Resize and sharp.
With the original file,more time, and care, I sure you could get better results. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,

Phil

[Shreeni Rao]

Phil,

I seem to like the original, it has something in terms of 'mood' as the eyes are a lot brighter and feels more expressive

[Kerry Perkins]

Phil, your repost is exactly what I had in mind. The original was lacking in contrast and color and the crop is much nicer. Ann, what do you think?

[annmpacheco]

Thank you all for your comments. Phil, thanks for your time and repost. I like the repost crop and with the boost in contrast; but, the blacks certainly pop and then the whites are brighter and lose detail. Also, as John pointed out: "if you expose for the white cheeks, then the eye is underexposed and shows little detail..." I think that is what has happened here, so it becomes a tradeoff of sorts. The increase in color certainly changes the overall color balance and it seems to lose the "soft mood color" it evoked for me. Using the color layer to remove the white and orange in the BG below the beak removes a puffin and I prefer the distant wash of color.

Interesting exercise to see what differences can be had. Thanks for all your help. Ann