There is one surviving chick on the pond this year. This morning the parents were taking turns watching it as the other one would do its own thing for a while and then they would switch. The adults were feeding the chick less than in previous weeks. Today they both seemed content just to stay nearby.
D7100 with 80-400 AFS lens at 400 mm. 1/2000 f/6.3 iso 320
Both the pairs I follow closely ended up with just one chick this year as well. Always sad.
I like the comp. here, headangle, sharpness
The colors do look oversaturated, esp. the eye. The other concern is how grey and muddy the whites are. I often see this if I run too much highlight recovery either with a blend mode such as linear or burn, or with detail extractor in Nik Color Efex Pro.
The amount of texture showing in the ribbing on the breast makes me think there is enough detail there with less post processing needed.
You were correct on detail extractor. How is this version (whites)? I reduced the saturation and did a few other things on the flattened tiff file I had saved so I could obviously not undo the detail extractor.
All the whites are def. less muddy on the repost, and if you have the time to go back to the raw file and reprocess, I am sure you will be able to clean them up completely.
The desaturated colors also look more natural, esp. the eye. It wasn't the brightness so much as the hue/sat which didn't look natural.
Nice portrait here, and you have cut the body at just the right place. I agree with the OP's saturation, but feel somewhere between the two would be best. Nice details and sheen on the head, and I like the ripples in the water. It would be well worth revisiting the raw file to get those whites cleaned up, and while at it I would also crop out the very thin white bit of reflection running along the bottom edge. Glad to hear at least one chick has survived...better than none.
Common loon portrait
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