Common Loon

[Ravi Hirekatur]

My first bird post. Taken at Chequamegon N.P. in Wisconsin. My first experience with a rented 300/2.8 lens.
Camera - Canon 30D
Lens - Canon 300/2.8 + 1.4x, tripod mounted, No flash
f4.5, 1/320, ISO 640
Cropped out 15-20%
CS4 - curves, color balance
dSLR fractal sharpen
Looks a little flat to me. Any suggestions on improving the image?
C&C appreciated.

[Amol Khedgikar]

Welcome Ravi,
This is a great forum.

Some noise in the whole picture.
Composition wise I would place the bird a little lower to the left in the frame.
Move around the curves and saturation more to bring out more colors, contrast and vibrance

[Kerry Perkins]

Ravi, welcome to ETL! Please add your comments and thoughts about the images that are posted here. We all benefit from the input of others. It looks like you had an overcast day when you captured this loon. It is a very nice pose and classic loon shot, well done on the capture. When the light is flat, as it was for this image, you need to add black and color. I took the liberty of doing that with this repost. I used levels, hue/saturation, vibrance, and color balance to give the image more punch. I hope you like the changes. I agree about the crop, the bird should go a little lower in the frame - not sure about the left as I think it's pretty close to the edge of the frame already. Well done! Looking forward to more.

[Enrique Patino]

I Like the colors in Kerry's RP better, but I would open up the black a bit more. I think it is a matter of personal taste?

To offer a different version, I just used a bit of fill light in LR, and fiddled with presence a bit to compensate (clarity=11, vibrance=9, sat=2)

[Ravi Hirekatur]

Thanks Amol, Kerry and Enrique for your suggestions. I liked both the reposts. They look much better than my OP. Kerry's RP was a bit too dark for me. Here is my repost. I cropped the bottom a little to bring the bird lower in the frame, used curves to darken just enough to keep some details on the face of the loon, increased vibrance and saturation, slightly increased greens and red in color balance, brightened the eye with dodge tool as it got a little too dark after curves. The contrast is not as good as the two reposts by Kerry and Enrique, but definitely improved from my OP. This is a very good learning experience for me. Thanks for your suggestions.

[John Chardine]

Great to have you here Ravi!

Very nice image with a lot of potential. It looks like the original post came straight out of the camera with little processing. It would be fun to work on a raw version of this image. Have a look at this thread!

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/93531-Monthly-Processing-Raw-Images-Exercise. It would be a great candidate.

I think there is too much space below the bird. The logical place to crop is just below the reflection. There's a green cast as well, which is easily fixed. I had a quick go at it here. I boosted contrast with an S-curve in Curves but made sure the blacks did not get too dark. I toned down the green a little in LAB colour (A channel). I also boosted the saturation, lightened the eye area and ran another round of sharpening. Again, I think working on the raw image would yield a very nice image.

[nancy hazen]

Ravi, what a beautiful bird. I love the Loons. We used to see them when we visited the lakes in the Adirondack Mts., but never seen to get close to them. You have gotten some great advice and the reposts are very nice. How did you like the 300? That is a great lens.

[Sachin Saraf]

Ravi, I am sure you must have been thrilled to have hold that lens...it is one of the best from the existing lineup from Canon...

I really like the John's re post...the loon is sharp and just needed some contrast and John rightly got rid of the color cast.

[Ravi Hirekatur]

Thanks John, Nancy and Sachin,

John's post looks a lot better than my repost. Nice contrast and details on the loon, but keeping the background natural. I would love to send the RAW image to see how it can be improved. I realize that when I was using the film media, I was underexposing to get some saturation. Now I am overexposing to keep the noise away on 30D and 7D. Doing so is resulting in flat images, and I haven't figured out how to make them better. This is a great learning experience for me.

I love the 300/2.8 lens. The sharpest lens I ever used. When you have it in your hand, it opens up a a whole new set of possibilities that you don't have otherwise. I hope to own it one day.

[Ravi Hirekatur]

John,
How did you remove the greenish cast in Lab color. I am not good at PS skills, and have had trouble removing color casts from the photos.
Thanks

[John Chardine]

Hi Ravi- Back in mid-2010 when I started as a mod on ETL, I laid out the method of colour correction in the LAB colour space. Here is the link.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/70663

Read the whole thing to get the context but my posts start at panel 10. Let me know if you have any further questions.

[Ravi Hirekatur]

John,
That is a great tutorial. Very clear presentation. I didn't know you could many things in LAB color. Thanks for posting it.