Wood Duck portrait

[Ramon Reyes]

Canon 7D
EF400mm f5.6 L lens
f7.1
1/2000sec
iso400



Thank you for looking.
Ramon

[John Robinson]

i love big head shots and this is a gem!!
Great stuff!!
JohnR

[Diane Miller]

Gorgeous! I wonder if the darks could be brought up just a little? The whites could be held down with no problem.

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Ramon. Welcome. This is a nice first post. I like the close-up look at one of my favorite ducks. A bit off the top would tighten things up. It looks like you brought out too much detail in the darks as the feathers look pretty much lifeless to me... Blackening the pupil would be a start to give this image some pop.

[Diane Miller]

Hi Ramon,

I didn't notice that this was your first post -- an excellent one -- I look forward to many more!

Artie and I have made what may sound like opposite comments, but I think we're saying the same thing in different ways. I don't know your experience level with processing, or what software you are using, so apologies if you already know this. The histogram shows almost all the information in the left 1/4. I think it might be possible, in raw conversion, to bring up the darks (not the blacks) just a little more (granting that they should still be darker than mid-tones) while holding down the whites so they are not blown out. Then if the very darkest tones are adjusted back down to black there should be more pop in the image. That would stretch the dark range of the histogram a little and should actually put more detail and pop in the darks, if the darkest tones are held at black.

Nik's Detail Extractor could then pull out a little more detail in both darks and lights. How they do that is a mystery, but I love it.

And apologies, too, if this is more appropriate to Eager to Learn. But I think this is a wonderful image with great potential.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Diane. As posted, this one could benefit from some NIK Tonal Contrast. Starting from scratch and going much darker, I would agree that Detail Extractor would help.

As far as most of the histogram being in the left quarter, that is how it should look with an overall dark image: dark green water, dark green feathers, and black feathers... As presented, the WHITEs on the bill look toasted or close to it. I call histograms like this "lying histograms." You always need to check for blinkies :).

I hope that Ramon re-visits :)

[Ramon Reyes]

Thanks Diane. As posted, this one could benefit from some NIK Tonal Contrast. Starting from scratch and going much darker, I would agree that Detail Extractor would help.

As far as most of the histogram being in the left quarter, that is how it should look with an overall dark image: dark green water, dark green feathers, and black feathers... As presented, the WHITEs on the bill look toasted or close to it. I call histograms like this "lying histograms." You always need to check for blinkies :).

I hope that Ramon re-visits :)

Thank you JohnR, Diane and Arthur for your comments and advise.

Arthur not sure if you remember meeting me at Gatorland on the morning of May 4th. You left early to go to St Augustine for another workshop I beleive.

I will definitely revist my processing, it's been a month or so when I processed this file.

As far as this being my first post... it is under Ramon Reyes since I couldn't login under my original user name of rajojomanik.

Thank you.
Ramon

[Arthur Morris]

Ramon, If you are having log-in problems you can e-mail Peter Kes here: kpkes@yahoo.com