Juvenile Masked Booby

[Colin Gilyeat]

Went on a cruise last week to the eastern carribean and saw a couple of boobys (had to look them up when I got back) while out on the cabin balcony on the second day out of Miami about 400 miles from St Maarten with no land in sight. Handheld from my cabin balcony (12th deck). Since I was shooting jpeg instead of raw, I don't have as much information to work with, although overall I'm pleased with the image.



Nikon D7000, Sigma 150-500@500mm, ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/1000, -1/3ev
PP in LR4, adjusted levels, white and black points, cropped for framing (kept approx 90% of original image), left the WB as shot (used auto WB). To me it looks like the whites are still a little hot, but that could be my monitor.

Thanks for looking/.

Colin

[Ian Cassell]

Colin, excellent handheld image. I agree that you could stand to back off on the whites , but I love the contrast of the bird against the blue water. I think shooting from above gave you a nice view of the bird and your sharpness is good. A little lightening of the eye would make them stand out. Position in the frame is right-on IMO. I was in St. Maarten in June and I only saw boobies a couple of times and never in good camera range (brown boobies).

[Colin Gilyeat]

Ian, thanks for your comments. I was surprised to see the boobys as far from shore as we were, and just as lucky that they were close enogh to the ship to get some shots. I've got to spend some time bgtting my photoshop skills to the point where I can deal with the hot whites. I just can't seem to do that in LR.

Colin

[Jeannean Ryman]

I'll echo Ian. Neat capture. On a side note, how come your photos are always so much larger than others posted on BPN?

[Colin Gilyeat]

Jeannean, Thanks for the comments. As for the image size, I just cheked and it looks like I have been posting them at 1600 on the long side instead of 1024 on the long side. So. I'll have to make sure that I use the correct size of 1024 on the long side.

Colin

[Jeannean Ryman]

Colin, I prefer the larger size. I didn't realize it was even possible to post larger sizes. I've gotten error messages before when I posted one of my "normal" 1200x795 sizes (size I usually upload for my personal web use). Being from Texas, bigger is nearly always better! ;-)

[Kerry Perkins]

As a participant Colin cannot have his images hosted on the BPN server. The size limitation only applies to images hosted on this site, so since his image is hosted on Flickr, there is no restriction on the size.

[Colin Gilyeat]

Kerry, thanks for te clarifiation on images sizes. I do plan on becomming a member, just haven't done it. But in the meantime, even though I can link to a larger size, to be consistent with the member postings, I'll use the member image size.

Colin

[Arthur Morris]

Sharp with nice upper wing detail. Huge lesson: never use JPEG capture. Though the bright WHITEs here are not showing as ovr-exposed they are detial-less. When you over-expose a JPEG, you are cooked. Not so with RAWS where you can often recover bright WHITEs. Lightening the face would improve this.