Coot - Can you advise ?

[Simon Wantling]

Dear all,

I wondered whether someone can advise me if possible. I seem to struggle in processing coot images that I take on my 7D and 100-400mm lens. It's not so much the exposure which I'm now doing a better job with using centre weighted exposure when photographing black birds on bright backgrounds. It's just that I'm never really entirely happy with the finished photo after I've processed it and it seems especially with coots for some reason.

I would really appreciate your comments on the attached photo and what if any way I could improve or change.

Thanks very much.

Simon

[Dennis Bishop]

I'm in no way an expert on coots, so view this accordingly. I like the composition and the depth of field. It looks to me, though, that the highlights on the head and bill are a bit bright and the details in some of the shadows on the coot are lost. I used the Shadows/Highlights image adjustment feature in Photoshop to lighten the shadows and darken the highlights, but other approaches could achieve the same result.

[Simon Wantling]

Thanks Dennis. If I'm honest, I originally had the image like your repost with the shadow detail lifted. What I couldn't decide is that the coot is effectively black so how much detail should I have. I find this a tricky one on these birds.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hello Simon, please give us your technical info so we can make more well-informed comments. You are correct about coots, they are quite a challenge and as always the challenge is light. This is one of those birds that have both very black and very white areas, so the exposure is difficult at best. What you must do for birds (or anything else) that have this very wide dynamic range is to control the light. Of course this is seldom possible in nature but the things that you do have control over is the time of day you shoot and the quality of the light. In my opinion, it is best to capture these birds in the shade, or at least very filtered daylight. When the light is strong, as it is in direct sunlight, you will have a real challenge with the white part of the bill versus the black plumage. I think you did a good job with the exposure and agree with Dennis on the white area. I do like the darker feathers of your original post though. If I may I would like to offer some examples of different light on coots:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...highlight=coot

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...light=coot#top

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...highlight=coot

[Dennis Bishop]

What Kerry says makes sense. However, I played around a bit more trying to get the coot looking more like what I saw when I did a search on images (something I should've done in the first place). Starting with what I already had from before, I used a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to desaturate and darken it (coot only). Then, I upped the contrast a bit with a Curves layer (coot only, again). It still didn't look like the images I'd found, though. They seemed a bit bluer, so I went with a cooling Photo Filter adjustment layer.

It's a roundabout way of getting there, but maybe that's a solution when the light isn't right.

[Jeannean Ryman]

I see coots all the time and I think your first post is probably closest to what they look like in that kind of light, so it looks pretty accurate to me. I do agree with Dennis and Kerry about the white bill being a bit on the hot side.