Pacific black duck

[Thonnaksar NOP]

A simple landing of a common duck, but I like the lighting here.
What do you think ?

D2Hs, 70-200 VR+TCx1.7, 1/2500", f/5.6, @340mm, 1000 ISO, Handheld
http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/9346/az06629resize1ls6.jpg

[Arthur Morris]

Lovely light, lovely bird. A crop from below would tighten it up nicely. The eye looks a bit funky...

[Harold Davis]

my first thought was about the eye too. other than that, it's great!!

[Thonnaksar NOP]

The eye looks a bit funky...

What do you mean by funky ?:confused:
Here's a 100% crop :

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Thonnaksar, Thanks for posting the crop. By funky, I meant that the pupil was not sharply defined, that the catchlight was too large, and that the feathers immediately around the eye were unsharp. If you like my re-post, I can fill you in on what I did. :)
ps: I might have overdone the front of the eye a bit (but not many pixels to work with)...

[Philip Lombard]

He means the color I think. It is a nice action shot.

[Thonnaksar NOP]

Hi Thonnaksar, Thanks for posting the crop. By funky, I meant that the pupil was not sharply defined, that the catchlight was too large, and that the feathers immediately around the eye were unsharp. If you like my re-post, I can fill you in on what I did. :)
ps: I might have overdone the front of the eye a bit (but not many pixels to work with)...
Hi Arthur,
Thanks for the tip. The eye looks better on your repost. I don't know how to do the selective sharpening yet (still reading your CD that I received 2 days ago !). I'll be interested to know what you have done to improve his eye.

[Arthur Morris]

<smile> First I used the clone stamp to replace much of the highlight which was greatly intruding on the pupil. Then I made a Quick Mask of the pupil, reduced the SAT 90% and moved the Lightess Slider to the left to 90%. That darkened the pupil. Next I used the clone stamp to repair the iris and get rid of the darker areas. Lastly I made a QM of the face and the top of the head, applied a contrast mask (Unsharp mask at 15/65/0). That makes the selected area look sharper and also darker so I did a Curves ADJ on the layer (CNTRL M) and lightened only the selection. Voila! Goodbye to the funky eye. Many of the techniques are in the CD book but some of the stuff is in updated versions of the Digital Basics File while the QMing stuff is all from Robert O'Toole's great APTATS 1 PDF.

You do NOT need to be a genious to learn Photoshop; lord knows, I am living proof of that. With the right educational materials anyone who applies themselves just a bit can become proficient in relatively short order. ****, five years ago the word Photoshop instilled fear in me. And there was no good teaching material around. I learned from friends and now we teach the world! You gotta love it. I do...

[Gus Cobos]

Nice landing, love the bright colors and the details of the bird...:cool: