Cormorant in Flight

[Bob Miller]

Took this at Bombay Hook De under cloudy skies
Nikon D3s
1/2500 sec at F5.6
ISO 1000
500 mm lense
All comments welcome!

[Jeannean Ryman]

Bob, this is a nice shot of the commie and love the wing span/focus. At ISO 1000, the background could use some selective noise reduction so it's not so distracting. Not sure if it was cropped, but if so, I'd prefer to see the bird higher and more water/less weeds. Overall, a nice shot.

[Dennis Bishop]

Jeannean raises some good points about the background and composition. Although I agree with her about noise reduction, I felt the overall intensity of the background was, also, somewhat distracting. My approach was to mask out the cormorant so it wasn't affected. Then, I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to desaturate and lighten the background. To add a bit of color to the water, I added a Photo Filter adjustment layer (underwater preset) and pretty much masked it off the browns in the background with a soft brush. I cropped a bit off the left and a fair amount off the top for composition. I'd prefer that the cormorant weren't so nearly centered vertically after the crop, but I wanted to raise it as much as possible without getting rid of too much of the habitat. I was hoping that the less intense background would obviate the need for noise reduction but maybe not.

[Bob Miller]

Thanks jean and Dennis....good suggestions!