Nazca Landing...

This Nazca Booby (formerly Masked Booby) was photographed on my recent Galapagos Photo Cruise on Hood Island/Espanola at Punta Suarez, one of my favorite places on the planet. For the first time in five trips I had favorable winds blowing out to sea and cloudy conditions... Just great for flight and for landing birds...

Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO lens handheld with the EOS-40D. ISO 640. Evaulative metering of the ocean +2/3 stop: 1/1000 sec. at f/4 set manually.

Got rid of some birds (including one that merged with the tail of the landing bird) on the bottom of the frame with a variety of techniques including protect and clone, Quick Masking, and the Patch Tool. Check out the next Bulletin this coming Monday to see the original frame.

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

I'm glad you got a chance to photograph this species. Great exposure control, landing pose, details and BG. I might add a bit more room at the bottom.

I really like the unusual wing position and pose!
Nice exposure too.

Hi Artie,
That's a striking bird. I like the black fringe on the feathers. Would love to see one of your close ups on this face. I like the pose and the BG color is quite complimentary. The edge on the rock in the LRC looks a little unnatural. The angle of it leads my eye to the unseen landing area but I'm curious as to why you didn't include more (perhaps lining the bottom of the frame) or eliminate it entirely. I ask because of your comment about the rock in the Lioness and Cub image in the wildlife forum.
Steve

Artie,

What can I say -

Another one of your great shots from another one of your great trips.

Have a blessed day - dave b.

Man I love that wing and head position! Sweet looking bird, the eyes look cool as well. Great job on the whites! A little more room on the bottom is a good thought.

Fabulous Artie. They really are "just" tropical gannets! This image looks like the very last stages of the decent into the colony, eyes down. I really like the steal grey sky. The rock at the bottom left looks a little processed by I would not have noticed without your notes. I must get back to the Galapagos.

If you got rid of some extra unwanted birds, you did much better than my PS skills would let me get away with. High marks for that one. I really like the wing positions, it has a helicopter landing look to it. As for the rock, well, I just don't know what to say about go for all of it or leaving as is. It's your art work, and only you know what you were after and wanted to get.

I like the blue feet almost flat, anticipating the landing and the intense steely eye. Good work there. Thanks for posting this one Art. Have a good day.

Beautiful picture (but you already knew that)... awesome bird, love the yellow bright eye inside the whites and blacks.
Once I read Steve's comments on the rock, I took another look at the picture and it does look a bit unnatural.

Anyway awesome shot.

The pose, sharpness, exposure, and background are all excellent. My only comment is that I'd like to see a bit more room at the bottom (as others have noted above) - either some room to land or a place to land. :)

I like it, although I wold like more room at the bottom, the wing position doesn't really work for me, I think with a bit more room would just look great still, the exp is perfect! Congratulations!

Thaks Bud. I love the wing position and the pose, that is why I spent an hour on the image... :)

I think the details in whites area amazing. The pose is as expected from you and the BG is smooth and complementing. I do wonder after all the PP why you left the corner rock. Sounds like I am not the only one thinking along those lines. :)

Killer shot, Artie! I like it just the way it is. I particularly like the eye.

A wonderful image of course, terrific details and one of your typical clean BG.
The only thing that is funny, is that you left something that to me looks like a rock or another bird or something on the lower right corner, did you leave this here on purpose? do this balance the composition? I am curios.

Thanks to all those who suggested more room at the bottom and pointed out that it was the edge of the rock that looked phony. Funny thing is when I looked at the optimized TIFF in Breezebrowser as I always do before creating the 800 pixel JPEG via an action, it looked fine. Butt when I checked back to see the first reply I thought, "this needs more room on the bottom." I therefore, went back to work for a repost...

Added to the bottom and did a Gaussian blur on the rock.

All comments appreciated and thanks again to all for helping me improve this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Steve Canuel

The angle (of the rock) leads my eye to the unseen landing area but I'm curious as to why you didn't include more (perhaps lining the bottom of the frame) or eliminate it entirely. I ask because of your comment about the rock in the Lioness and Cub image in the wildlife forum. Steve

---

I did not remove the rock completely because I did not want folks to think that the bird was landing on nothing... As John Chardine pointed out, the bird's posture indicates that this is the way-final approach and that landing is imminent. And there was no way for me to put in a cliff edge across the bottom of the frame... As far as the rock in the lion image, that is a totally different sistuationy--there was one rock in front of the lioness and lots of room at the top. And it looked as if by pointing the camera down a bit, the entire rock plus a small border around it could have been included in the frame. In my image there is a whole cliff that continued all the way back to where I was standing. I did leave the rock in part as you stated above to lead the viewer's eye to the (unseen) landing area but there was no way at all to include the whole cliff. Lastly, the angled rock in this image serves somewhat as a frame.

For educational purposes, here is the ORIG. I used protect and defend cloning with the magnetic lasso to do the work by the bird's feet and tail. Not sure what I did to the edge of the rock but it is strange that the phony rock edge was evident to many but that the feet and the tail looked perfectly natural...

Note also the impact of the simple Levels and Curves adjustments and the work on the eye (as I have been preaching...) Darkened the pupil and lightened and SAT-ed the iris with a QM. (Thanks again to Robert O'Toole for teaching me QMs.)

And thanks again to all.

Thanks for the explanantion and the additional posts Artie.

Wow. You did do a lot of work on this one, and well I might add. The explanation of the lioness cub and rock, plus why you did yours that way with the combination of the original raw file, tells visually why you did it this way. good teaching tool here. Thanks for your kind response and post.

The repost looks excellent! Lovely species and landing pose, and nice cloning work! I never use the patch tool for anything because I didn't think it was that handy but shots of yours are making me believe otherwise. Would you know of any tutorials on how to use it properly? Thanks and in any case an excellent shot!

Hey Krijn, Thanks. The Patch Tool is amazing. I use it in one way or another on 90% of my images for a variety of purposes. My Digital Basics File PDF covers the basics and a few advanced techniques but the Patch Tool is really easy to use. (Digital Basics also covers the Protect and Clone technique (and about 500 other topics including our complete digital workflow. For the Patch Tool, just make that you have Source selected and not Destination... Then draw a line around what you want to change and drag it to the stuff you want to blend it with... DB does describe some neat tricks... With this image I grabbed large areas of blue that had been either Clone Stamped or QMed and smooth them out by dragging the patch to a totally smooth area.

Hey Arthur, thank you so much for all this info. I can´t wait to get my CD. Is funny, again, that I love photography, but at the same time I must love computers! and I do, is just that some times people see an image and don´t know what is behind, they see you with a camera and believe that it does it all!

fantastic and very educational post...thx Mr.Artur!

I really like the captured moment. Im gald you had the correct weather conditions you expected. I totally agree with the change that gave more space at the bottom
Congratulations

Just adding my well done. Great work