This is the same poor fellow with the broken mandible, taken 4 minutes after my previous post. The sky brightened up from cloudy dull to cloudy bright, bringing out a lot more detail in the head. C&C appreciated.
D7000, 700mm, ISO 800, 1/2500s @ f/6.3 manual, tripod.
Bill Sir:
This is absolutely marvelous portrait with magical colors and great IQ.
Love the colors,especially green on head and red eye,great hair do with nice details. Very nice composition too.
The light change made your photos go from great to awesome! I've never seen one of these guys before, but now I can see why everyone wanted more detail in the blacks .. look at those feathers!
Nicely don Bill. I wonder how he survives with that defect. You managed to get nice and close to him with great detail. I feel the image could use a little pop in contrast.
Its all about the light as you know. Much more detail now in the head and the blacks. Nice pose and HA. I agree with Cheryl about a little more contrast or maybe some color saturation boost. Great work.
Very nice Bill! These aren't easy to get with all the color in the head!!! I don't think you want to go with contrast....as that may get rid of the colors in the head. Try some selective color work judiciously.....that should be the final tweak to an excellent image!
Thank you everyone. Roman, I hesitated to boost contrast for the reason you suggest. But I've tried a compromise here. This is a Soft Light adjustment layer at 20% opacity, which does boost contrast just slightly and seems to me to accentuate reds and yellows just a bit. Then I erased a few portions of the layer where it was taking some detail from the blacks, and added just a hint of Burn and Saturation to the breast. Fairly subtle changes, but it may have added a little pop. Thanks everyone for the comments and helpful suggestions.
FYI, the end of the upper mandible looks rather smooth. I think this is an old, well healed injury and this guy is doing just fine. I have a photo of a bird similar to this from one of the ponds in the Belmar, NJ area from a few years back and it seemed to be fine as well. I imagine the loss of a bit of bill tip doesn't adversely impact them too badly.
Thanks Paul. I did notice that the injury seemed as if it might be an old one. I found it curious, though, that this individual seemed especially tame, coming very close to shore where I was sitting. Almost as if he was looking for a handout.
Bill, I actually had a female / young male that was pretty tame on Saturday which spent of chunk of time preening in front of me. I posted a shot over on Eager to Learn. The R-B Mergs at Barnegat seemed a bit less skittish (though most still not really tame) at Barnegat than they have all winter. They'd move out but then drift back if I sat low and still. Maybe it's spring fever?
The Unfortunate Merganser, Take #3.
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