Since I have not seen chicks this year I am looking for shots less common than loon in middle of pond. Here is a loon in front of a rock. The flower improves the bg a lot imho.
D800 with 300 f/4 and 1.4 tc. 1/2000 at f/8 iso 400. Taken from my kayak.
Nice to see a different look for a loon image. Nice head position, vibrant eye, and yes the flower is a nice touch.
On my monitor there is a green cast showing up, esp in the whites, but the head is much greener than I would expect, so perhaps partly a saturation issue?
I would consider removing the lower catch light to improve the apparent sharpness of the eye.
I like the head position. I'm not wild about the rock behind.
You have a really heavy cyan cast in the feathers in the shadow on the bird's back. This should be removed. similarly with the wavelet at the 5 pm postion from the bird, and shadows on the rock.
If this were mine, I'd also desaturate the flower in the background - the eye gets drawn to it instead of staying with the bird. Since its not the focu of the image, it becomes a distracting element.
Here's a simple repost to show removal of the cyan and the flower, plus removal of the stick under the chin. More work could be done to mask/layer as needed - but only the small jpg was available....I haven't played with green saturation, but did add a little to the red of the eye (masked)
I like the low perspective, the nice light, and the perfect head angle. Not crazy about the rock wall or the horizon line cutting through the neck. The face and eye seem to be badly lacking sharpness.
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Thanks for the comments. The green head sure is prominent, but it is that color when the sun hits it the right way. I did not do anything on purpose to raise the saturation, but I will lower it.
I do like the rock and flower but this may just be a case that I was looking for a different shot. Certainly, the rock cutting through the neck is not good, though I missed seeing that on my own. :) I guess the same can be said for the flower as a distraction but it wasn't to me.
Loon in front of rock
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