Lovely inflight capture Bob, and you certainly display it's namesake very well. I also like the down beat wing-spread. To me the bird looks like the exposure is pretty good, although the whites on the backend and tail are a bit hot on my monitor, but not severely so. The background has a lot of noise and strange streaks in it, so I did a selection of the bird, inversed it, and ran some noise reduction on it. I also thought it was a bit dark compared to your bird (purely subjective since I don't really know how dark the water actually is), so did a slight midtone levels adjustment to brighten it up. This may or may not needed, but I think the noise reduction is. I also burned the highlights on the backend 8% with the burn tool in PS5. The redo is just an idea of what I think you can do to help with the background. The bird looks nice to me. :)
Greetings Bob , Super sharp BIF , Jeannean's repost did handle a problem with the BG ,Tho I would have kept if darker . But that is what makes each of our works unique .
Thanks for the feedback, it's much appreciated. It most definitely needed noise reduction! But with the adjustment for the whites on the bird, it seems that those edits lost some detail and sharpness on the head, so from that standpoint, I still prefer the version I submitted. Now I have to dig into Lightroom and find out how to use noise reduction there, but I don't imagine it should be very difficult.
Bob, I didn't do any noise reduction on the bird...just the background. The head sharpness might look different with the lighter background. The darker background creates more contrast. I'm sure you can take care of the noise best with the RAW file. You can do the same in LR with the adjustment brush, and make sure the mask is completely dark on the background before applying sharpening. That helps a lot.
Nice BIF capture, very sharp. Jeannean did a nice job on the BG. I started out with LR too, but have switched over to Photoshop so that the NR can be applied only to the BG, not the subject. Jeanean's subject is a bit lighter, original a bit darker, but I do not see differences in sharpness. I think the sun may be a bit high as evidence by the highlights on the back and the catch light. You handled the exposure well here. I'd suggest selectively toned down the highlight on the back just a bit as it draws attention.
Thanks for the comments. You have an excellent eye, Loi - the sun was a bit high and I got this shot as I was leaving to go home. Looks like the consensus is that I need to get and learn Photoshop. Guess I'll have to bite the bullet and put some time into learning it.
Greater Yellowlegs in flight
