Southern Royal Albatross sky-call

[Ian Wilson]

The breeding season starts in October-November with the return to the colony of breeding males followed by females during the next two weeks. The males begin nest construction while waiting for their partners to arrive. Unfortunately, some females never arrive leaving their partners isolated in the colony. The males call for their partners until January when they finally lose hope and return to sea. The picture shows one such male that we found at the Campbell Is colony, still calling for his partner on 8 January 2014.
Canon 5DIII + 300 mm f/2.8L II + 2x III extender, Gitzo 3532LS, Kirkphoto King Cobra gimbal.
Av priority, f/10, 1/1000 sec, ISO 640.
PP in DPP: crop, adjust WB, brightness, shad/h'lights, USM, RAW-tiff. PS Elements: brighten eye, tiff-output jpeg, USM.
Critical feedback welcome. Thanks for looking.

[Binu John]

Beautiful shot! Very nice expoosure! I would do a selective NR on the background.

[Ian Wilson]

Thanks for feedback - much appreciated. I see what you mean. I decided I needed to increase the brightness a little and it has also increased the noise. In this repost I have given the background a little noise reduction - hope it looks better.

[Steve Kaluski]

Ian I would suggest you try a Linear burn, or a Luminosity adjustment to try and coax out more detail & depth from within the white plumage. Also your file does not have an embedded colour profile, check your setting for when you convert to sRGB for web images, I bet it's an unchecked box.

TFS
Steve

[Binu John]

Thanks for feedback - much appreciated. I see what you mean. I decided I needed to increase the brightness a little and it has also increased the noise. In this repost I have given the background a little noise reduction - hope it looks better.

The background noise look better in the repost!

[Marina Scarr]

Killer behavior captured here. What an awesome pose, and I just love the vegetation/habitat. RP looks better in terms of noise.

[Don Lacy]

HI Ian, I would run another round of NR on the bg and if you have Color Efexs 4 use the detail extractor on the bird only at about 24% opacity. Love the pose and environment

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Ian, you have captured a great calling pose, and we have a great view of the bill. I do like the surrounding folige, but could see a version as a vertical too. Your repost has sorted out the noise. Well done.

[Ian Wilson]

Thank you so much to all who gave me feedback on this image. You gave me confidence that the image was worth persevering with and I went back to the RAW file and started over again. In handling the whites I first looked closely to see if there was extra detail that could be extracted but found little to work with as this picture was taken late in the day in overcast conditions. Even though the image is almost full frame with width over 5000 pixels, there is very little contrast from fine feather detail that one might expect to see in direct sunlight. I decided to pull back the strongest whites from about 245 DN to 235 DN and be more aggressive with the shadow and highlight adjustment. This has resulted in more structural contrast on for example, the bird's neck. I have also been more aggressive with NR on the background. Regarding the suggestion of a portrait crop, this was my first inclination but it resulted in cutting off the nice clump of Poa in the background. I then decided to go with the landscape option and include all of the Poa. Thanks once again for all your help - much appreciated. Ian

[Don Lacy]

Your repost pulls the most out of the image well done

[Ian McHenry]

Really like the latest background noise reduction, but to me a regular application of Noise Ninja brought slightly more snap to the eye and dark feathers.
Beautiful image.

[Ian Wilson]

Really like the latest background noise reduction, but to me a regular application of Noise Ninja brought slightly more snap to the eye and dark feathers.
Beautiful image.

Hi Ian, Thanks for your kind comments and tip regarding the use of Noise Ninja. I did not apply any noise reduction to the bird and since I received two infringement notices from the 'sharpening police' I have been very careful, perhaps too careful, with the amount of sharpening I use.
Regards, Ian

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

The biggest influence on getting noise in images is how you expose it in the first place. Shooting to the right as far as you can (on the histogram) then reducing exposure during post processing makes a HUGE difference, especially at high ISOs. So many people don't seem to grasp that concept. It's the simplest to learn and will get you the best possible quality image data and noise performance (lack of noise that is).

Wonderful image by the way!

[Ian Wilson]

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on this post - much appreciated.
Regards, Ian