Piping Plover

[David Kenny]

I took this photo of the Piping Plover very early Monday morning at Sandy Hook. I was disappointed by the amount of garbage and debris that was on shore and floating around in the water. Shooting around it added to the challenge. My question to you on this shot is do the 2 highlights to the right of the bird or the dark band from the wave at the top ruin this shot?

As always looking forward to your input / advice on this shot.

Canon 7D and the 100-400 5.6 @400mm
F6.3
ISO 400
1/500
Hand held

-Dave

[Diane Miller]

What a cutie, and a very pleasant shot in wonderful light. I think it was a good idea to get down so low, to limit the somewhat busy pebbles to a narrower band. I wouldn't say the OOF specular highlights and dark band "ruin" the image, but they are things I would fix, and it's easy to do. I'd also darken the light pebble bottom center. If you are opposed to cloning, the dark band could be cropped out, or mostly so. What is your processing software?

[Greg Payne]

Good looking bird and perspective. I'd also remove the mentioned places and the dark spot below his tail. But a really nice shot.

[Doug West]

About the out of focus foreground which is too distracting for me, but is definitely fixable.

Normally, I'd crop at about the point where the OOF meets the in focus part, to move the Plover
more toward the bottom of the frame and away from the center.

Then whatever OOF is left, clone it with some of the focused shells. What I normally do is, lets say
the left part is still OOF and you want to replace that. I'll pick something on the opposite end to clone.
This way the repeating patterns are a lot more hard to spot to the naked eye. It's just something you
have to play with until you find the right combination.

The whole process will probably take a lot less time than the time it took me to write this out :)

Doug

[Ian Cassell]

David, Good low-angle of a very cute little bird. Nice and sharp. I agree that that OOF is a bit distracting and would crop most of it out.

[David Kenny]

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions.
Diane I have CS5 and LR3 for editing though I tend not to remove much from my shots. I could definitely crop out the dark band to eliminate it from the photo. One thing that I didn't notice that a few of you pointed out was how busy and distracting the OOF foreground is. I always think subject and then background when I shoot and never once did I think about the foreground. It is something to remember for next time. Thanks again.

- Dave

[Arthur Morris]

I do not mind the dark band at the top as it sort of frames the bird. Though the o-o-f foreground did not bug, a nice crop from the bottom is called for. As for the clean-up, that is my specialty.... I did a quick (ten minutes) and easy job here. I could do a lot better with the master file :). It was too contrasty for me so I applied a gentle reverse S curve.

[Diane Miller]

Here's a further thought: the dark area at the top does provide a frame but where it goes lighter right at the top pulls the eye. Here is a version where it is cropped to eliminate the "reverse gradient" of the lightening. I also cropped from the bottom, just a little more than Artie's version. I started with the original since Artie's version doesn't have an embedded profile. I assume it was sRGB but since it isn't tagged I have no way to know what he intended for colors.

I didn't change the contrast -- Artie did a nice job on that, which is a difficult task after the raw stage.

I simply hit the two specular highlights with the spot healing brush, along with the darker area at the left edge. The Spot Healing Brush has made life a lot easier for many small retouching jobs.

[David Kenny]

Artie - Thanks for the clean up and the adjustments it looks a lot better. My PP skill is on the limited side so my results would never look that good.

Diane - When ever I use the spot healing tool or any cloning tool for that matter I always feel like I can still see the spot no matter how long I work at it. One of my favorite images from this outing was ruined by a piece of Styrofoam floating in the water to the left of the bird. I have tried over and over to remove but always notice the spot where it was. I have worked on that one 4 times already and have not been happy with the results.

I do have another similar shot with a cleaner background with the bird positioned lower in the frame but unfortunately the bird did not have a bend in the leg (which I liked in this shot).

Thanks for your help.

[Arthur Morris]

Artie - Thanks for the clean up and the adjustments it looks a lot better. My PP skill is on the limited side so my results would never look that good.

Diane - When ever I use the spot healing tool or any cloning tool for that matter I always feel like I can still see the spot no matter how long I work at it. One of my favorite images from this outing was ruined by a piece of Styrofoam floating in the water to the left of the bird. I have tried over and over to remove but always notice the spot where it was. I have worked on that one 4 times already and have not been happy with the results.

I do have another similar shot with a cleaner background with the bird positioned lower in the frame but unfortunately the bird did not have a bend in the leg (which I liked in this shot).

Thanks for your help.

YAW and wrong. Anyone can learn my Photoshop image clean-up techniques. Get yourself a copy of my Digital Basics File, an instructional PDF written in my easy-to-understand, easy to follow style. It is sent via e-mail. Learn to use the Spot Healing Brush (properly), the Clone Stamp, and the Patch Tool quickly and efficiently. In addition to the above it includes my complete digital workflow, dozens of great Photoshop tips, the use of Contrast Masks, several different ways of expanding and filling in canvas, all of my time-saving Keyboard Shortcuts, Quick Masking, Layer Masking, and NIK Color Efex Pro basics, my killer image clean-up techniques, Digital Eye Doctor, creating time-saving actions, and lots more.

[Diane Miller]

Both the cloning tool and spot healing tool will completely cover a spot. Going over it repeatedly doesn't do anything unless the clone tool is set to a low opacity. Look on the top options bar for an opacity setting. (Each tool has various settings up there.) The spot healing brush has a sample all layers option which could be causing different behavior. Or you might be retouching on a duplicate layer that is not at 100% opacity (a slider at the top right of the Layers panel).

Both are incredibly easy to use for small areas.