Two Snow Geese in Flight - Bosque

[Dennis Zaebst]

In my ongoing compulsion (apparently) to post images of pairs of birds, I offer the attached for your C/C. I liked the BG here.

Canon 50D; ISO 400; EF 70-200 mm f/4L IS @ 200 mm; 1/3200 sec. @ f/8.0; -1/3 EV; AV mode; AI-servo AF. PP in LR 4.3, cropped to about 50% of FF; some sharpening, edge masking, luminance smoothing; raised shadows and reduced highlights in post.

Your thoughts on the photo would be most welcome. Thank you.

[Randy Stout]

Dennis:

I think that two birds are often more interesting than one, esp. when you get good poses from both, as you have here.

The sky is very nice, like the comp.

There are some edge issues on both birds, esp. noticeable on the vee of the wings on the top bird. You might want to revisit your masking.

Keep those duos coming!

Cheers

Randy

[Jim Michael]

I like these shots of pairs of birds which are either synchronous like this example or fully asynchronous. The color balance looks a little on the blue side (perhaps a touch magenta as well). I'll bet you can recover more detail in the whites with an adjustment of the curve in the highlight region.

[Dennis Zaebst]

Hi Randy...thank you for your comments, they are most appreciated. I guess I am not fully understanding your comment about the edge issues. Perhaps the image was over-sharpened? Can you elucidate what you are seeing?

I did not use masking in the sense of layers and selections on this image, as it was processed entirely in LR 4.3. The edge masking I mentioned is a slider in the develop module which helps reduce the necessity for sharpening and NR in LR. Since Adobe introduced that slider, it has greatly reduced the amount of NR necessary. One uses it by holding down the ALT key (in Windows) while moving the masking slider to the right. What is being sharpened shows as white in the image, and what is black is not sharpened, thus you move the slider (while holding down the ALT key) to the right until the BG is nearly all black. It works beautifully to sharpen the subject while leaving the BG alone.

Thanks again.

[Satish Ranadive]

Dennis:
Excellent image of pair of goose on wonderful backdrop.I like the wing positions,open beaks,nice lights and details.
Agree with Randy Sir about edges of the wings. There a halo around the edges and some blacks.

Regards,
Satish.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Dennis,

It's always nice to see two birds over one (when you can get good poses from both - as you did here). The wing position and head angle of both are very nice. I also enjoy the hint of texture and color in the bg.

I do think the whites are just a bit hot, and would consider bringing the whites/highlights down just a tad.

[Dennis Zaebst]

Thanks everyone. Attached is the completely unaltered file at 100%, centered on the lead goose. Can you point out exactly what you are seeing? I don't believe the minimal adjustments I did to the original post could have caused any halo effect. Perhaps what you are seeing is the uneven coloration and texture in the BG clouds, or perhaps the clarity and sharpening adjustments accentuated these aspects?

I am at this point rather mystified.

[PhilCook]

The halo edges are not visible on the unaltered image, only on the edited version, and likely due to a slight over sharpening.

Here's a crop from your original image post pointing out some spots where it is visible, and also a small section { between the lines on the underside} where I quickly removed the halo

However, still a great bit of synchronicity in motion, and liking the hints of blue sky behind


edit......you may have to save my copy to your computer and enlarge to see it better on this cropped from cropped version in this post

[Dennis Zaebst]

Thanks Phil...that is very helpful. I will check out things further, but it looks like a bit of over-sharpening caused the halos. Thanks again.

[PhilCook]

Thanks Phil...that is very helpful. I will check out things further, but it looks like a bit of over-sharpening caused the halos. Thanks again.

You're welcome Dennis....I used to...sometimes still do find I have a halo on some images especially with a sky backdrop....but I have learned to hate it hehehehe, along with things like chromatic aberration so my eye goes straight for these particular defects....I urgently need to get a life hehehehe

[Dennis Zaebst]

Here is a second try...it may be too late to get any additional critique at this point, but here I tried hard to eliminate any evidence of halos around the periphery of the birds. Perhaps I succeeded, perhaps not, but I hope this is an overall improvement. I was more careful this time in watching the sharpening while looking at a 2:1 view. I also adjusted the color balance slightly away from the magenta toward green, and did what I could with the hot whites. Although the brightest whites are around 90%, I don't think there is more detail to be had.

Thanks everyone for your incredibly sharp eyes!

[Dennis Zaebst]

Oops...forgot the attachment. Here it is.