Advice please.

[keith mitchell]

Nikon d300
Nikon 500ml f4.
Handheld.
1/250@f4.5 iso 500.

Image taken on a wet foggy winter afternoon I do like the atmosphere the conditions created but not sure about the quality of the bird so my first question is it worth keeping?. If it is worth keeping then all I have done is a little crop so I would very much appreciate any tips to improve it or if anyone would fancy a repost for me. Must say that I have learned a lot from reading the comments made to other posts on this site.

Thanks Keith.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Keith, like you, I'll be interested to hear the thoughts, but will have a ponder.

Must say that I have learned a lot from reading the comments made to other posts on this site.

Told you

[Luis Patacao]

Hi Keith, not that i have much experiencie but i will try to help. :)

The first thought that came to me by looking at this image was "the owl doens`t seems to be sharp, is it because of the 1/250s for the 500m handheld?" I don`t know your lens nor do i know if the VR was on full power but that is what it seems. Regading the atmosphere, like you i enjoy it, but would try to ligh up a bit in PP.

Hope it helps.

[Iain Barker]

Hi Keith

I'm a bit unsure about the half closed eye. With this being a portrait shot of the bird I think it would have been better with strong eye contact.
If it were mine I would crop most of the right had side and make the image a vertical crop but still try and keep the bird to the left of centre. I also agree with Luis that it needs lightening. I think your exposure has turned the white fog into a mid grey so I think you need to try and bring that back to more of a white tone.

Iain

[gail bisson]

Hi Keith,
Any owl image is worth keeping!!
I am not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to PP but here is my 2 cents worth.
1. The image is underexposed by a half stop or so. I would increase the exposure keeping an eye on noise appearing.
2. I would crop a bit tighter and also try a vertical composition.
3. The owl's right eye needs to be dodged significantly
4. There is a film on the lower third of the image due to the fog I think. If you have Nik Efex Pro and Photoshop I recommend you go to Art Morris' blog ( Birds as Art) and look up the blog about the image he took in Japan of the 3 monkeys in the fog ( this was last year around February). He explains very well how he cleared up the fog.
4. The image needs sharpening as well.
There are tons more things you can do but I think I will let more expert opinions take over!
Gail

[keith mitchell]

Thanks to you all ,Luis you have a point I would certainly try to sharpen it ,Ian I messed up a bit I have the same Owl with both eyes open and tried to crop as suggested ,gail you have given me some very good advice think the line that you mention may be the outline of distant woodland.

[Iain Barker]

Hi Keith

Hope you don't mind but I just had a quick play to show how I would crop it it the IQ of the original allows.

I definitely prefer the second image to you original post. I opened it in photoshop and cropped how I would crop it. I also dogged the eyes as Gail suggested and altered the highlights and mid tones slightly in curves.
I think if the original is a raw file you should be able to adjust the level in that better than I have on the jpeg.

What do you think?
Iain

[Diane Miller]

I'm late to this, so can just say you got some good advice. You could do a Curves (or Brightness-Contrast) masked to the duller area in the LL by a gradient, and add brightness and contrast there. For crop, I'd probably go in between the lest 2, but that's just personal choice. The last feels a bit crowded.

[keith mitchell]

Iain I don't mind at all in fact this is just the thing I like, Gail/Iain not sure about the ( dodged /dogged the eyes never done this. I will take all this advice and thanks to you all,

Keith.

[Iain Barker]

Hi Keith

To dodge (I really need to check my spelling) the eyes I selected the dodge tool which looks like a lolly then you get a menu at the top. I have the range set to midtones, exposure set to 50% and have a soft edge selected you can then alter the size to the size needed. Then simply click and move the cursor over the area you need to lighten. The 50% lest you apply selectively to the area.
Dodging is a technique from traditional printing where an object like the lolly or a hand is used to stop light from the enlarger hitting the paper. The burning tool (looks like a hand) does the exact opposite and allows you to selectively darken an area.
You don't need to lighten the eyes as much as I have if you think it was too much but you can see it really draws attention to the eyes when there is colour in them.

Iain

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Keith,

Greetings. I took a quick stab at pp. It's always tricky working with small jpegs but this should give an idea anyway.



Noise reduction.
Slight halo on right side near eye (probably from back lighting), since the bg needed to be pulled up I just leveled the bg against the halo in curves (pulled bg up to halo level)
Added Saturation
Lab mode curves to wb to taste (a little warmer) and feather colors to taste (may be off not knowing the subject).
Detailing - Topaz adjust (I do an unconventional detailing in an uprezed version).
cropped for comp - moved 1/2 closed eye to exact center - space to taste minding diagonal
Reduce to BPN size, sharpen

The detailing/sharpening is not sufficient, but should work out better on original raw data.

Plenty to work with, methinks. I'm of the ilk that doesn't throw anything away (disk is cheap). As your processing skills increase (and processing software improves) shots like this becomes more amenable to working up to one's standards.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[keith mitchell]

Michael thanks a lot for your take on my image.

Keith.

[nick clayton]

I hope you don’t mind but I couldn't resist a little play Keith. I copied your improved image which you made a good job of, especially the eyes. I copied the lower part of the bird and branch affected by the OOF object and put them on a different layer. I then copied some background from the top and stretched it across the bottom behind the new layer I just created. I used Nik Tonal contrast and some dodge and burn on the new layer plus the sponge tool on the eyes to increase saturation. I then flattened the image and in levels I pulled the right hand slider in, I carried out some noise reduction on the background, I carried out another round of Nik Tonal contrast on the whole bird this time then finally some USM. Hope I haven’t missed anything.

[Diane Miller]

Wonderful transformation! Great ideas have been put forth here!

Half the battle is seeing what needs to be done. If it needs to be, it probably can be.

[keith mitchell]

Thanks to you all it as been very interesting to see such different views of this image, must say Nicks looks really good but perhaps the foggy atmosphere as been a bit lost, anyway I have certainly learned from this so thanks again.

Keith.

[nick clayton]

Sorry Keith I didn't realise you wanted the fog to stay a bit, I got a bit carried away.

[keith mitchell]

Nick don't be sorry you made that Owl look a lot better than I ever could.

Thanks Keith.

[Sandy Witvoet]

GREAT RP Nick! And, Keith.... did like the foggy atmosphere, but it may have been a bit better with more "environment"? Like, why is there fog? On this one... I do think the loss of fog was a good idea. BTW.... GREAT SHOT (sorry to be somewhat "generic" in that comment... but, it IS!)