(August Theme) Oystercatcher Eyes Meal

[Jon Saperia]

I shot this at Nickerson Beach in early July while on a workshop getting some instruction from Denise and Artie. This particular Oystercatcher had just dug up this meal and was checking it out. Shot with Nikon D700 600mm f4 with a 1.7 TC (1000 mm). ISO 450, f6.7, 1/1600 sec. Manual Mode with no flash or EC. Processed with CS3. I did remove some seaweed that was a bit distracting.

[Daniel Cadieux]

It is an interesting pose, it's different to see sand stuck to the upper mandible's "roof". Perhaps there is a bit more detail to extract from the black neck, and compositionally I'd prefer more room in front of the oystercatcher for a resulting 3:2 ratio.

[Jim Fenton]

Cool activity although the head angle takes away from it for me...although others may not agree as they eye is very prominent which is a good thing.

Agree that more room is needed in the front and also agree with Daniels comments about the blacks in the neck. You could easily open those up a bit either using the dodge tool or doing a little QM and using the selective color for blacks.

The whites appear to have a tad of a greenish / cyan color cast perhaps? Minor.

[Jon Saperia]

Cool activity although the head angle takes away from it for me...although others may not agree as they eye is very prominent which is a good thing.

Agree that more room is needed in the front and also agree with Daniels comments about the blacks in the neck. You could easily open those up a bit either using the dodge tool or doing a little QM and using the selective color for blacks.

The whites appear to have a tad of a greenish / cyan color cast perhaps? Minor.

Thank you and Daniel for the comments. I have attached a revision incorporating some of the comments. I tried pretty hard to get more detail in the blacks and the more I messed with it, the less I liked it - now it just stinks. I did try QM and selective color for blacks, perhaps my technique is just not very good. I did change the crop to be a more standard one with more room in front. I should have done that from the get go. In terms of the head, I think the reason that you see the sand sticking is because this Oystercatcher was digging. Here is a URL of what I think is the same one digging. Some people do not like these shots so I never posted it:

http://jonsaperia.zenfolio.com/p950144862/h3bc5076a#h3bc5076a

[Daniel Cadieux]

Jon, the composition on the repost is much better, a much looser flow to it (I do think the new comp could use less above though, but very subjective). I also like that the blues now have a bigger impact on the image.

It can be tough to recover blacks that are all but blocked. The best way is to start with the raw file and see if there is anything during that first step to bring out. As you point out, it is easy to mess up!

I like the image you link to:S3:

[Jon Saperia]

Thanks very much. I agree with too much on top. I was focusing on using a 'standard' 8x10 aspect crop, but sometimes standard is just not what you want.
/jon