Fall Colors and Semi-palmated plover

[gail bisson]

Canon 1Dx and 600mm and 1.4x
ISO 1600
F 5.6 SS 1/1250
PP : Crop, levels, cloned out 2 very small dark spots along bottom frame, detail extractor to breast at 15% and 3% to rest of plover, NR to BG.
Taken in bright cloudy conditions.
I have been picturing this image for a couple of years now. At the far end of the beach at the cottage is a reddish granite rock wall. When the tide is low, it exposes the redder rock. I also need morning light because the wall goes into shadow after 4:00PM. And I need a bird, any bird, to be in the right spot at the right time.
Yesterday, it all came together! Finally...
Comments and critiques always appreciated and learned from with thanks,
Gail
PS The BG has that hateful "pixellation" that comes from ? compression for web presentation. Looks fine at full resolution but would love any tips to reduce this issue for web presentation. It only seems to occur with dark colors.

[Binu John]

Wow!! Stunning shot, Gail! Love that BG and pose. The exposure is spot on. I wish this was mine. TFS

[Sandy Witvoet]

Lovely, Gail. Color of the BG is so nice. I only see a bit of pixelation in the BG... but minimal. Very sweet image.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

First of all Gail, a Huge Congratulations on getting your 2 year vision captured. The SEPL pops right out of the frame beautifully. I'll admit, the second most curious thing was the reddish BG, and I kept looking at it wondering how this occurred. The eye contact, raised foot, and detail are ideal. Excellent work with the whites. At first because that reddish granite rock is so beautiful, I wanted to see the sand a tad darker, but the more I look, the more I think not to touch it. It's almost a blowing sand appearance created by shallow depth of field. Don't touch a thing IMHO. I may be the only one, but the BG looks fine on my monitor.


Geoffrey

[shane shacaluga]

Just Wow!

the bird on that background is simply amazing. It just pops out of the screen

great techs and well done on completing the image you had envisioned

thanks for sharing

[Grace Scalzo]

A beauty for sure, both the bird and your image. What pops is the orange at the base of his bill and the eye ring, thanks to that wall color. Nice!!!

[Enrique Patino]

Great image Gail. The bird pops and it really stand out against the BG. I like it that the shift in BG is somewhat gradual and not sharp. I think you could have used a f/6.3 or f/7.1, but 5.6 works well. I tried to bring out more detail in the whites. Hope you don't mind me posting here for your consideration.

[Sridatta Chegu]

I really love this cute bird's pose against the gradient background and nice exposure on whites. Great work!

[Dumay de Boulle]

OOH!!! Thi is lovely. Great shooting angle and a wonderful BG. Very nice gail!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gail , very nice with lovely colors and tones a pleasing BKG and nice placement of the subject .The whites are looking a bit bright and in parts blown , i would work in the whites to get a fraction more detail .

A very fine image .

TFS Andreas

[Ian Wilson]

Superb image with great planning and execution. Not much one can do about the graininess on smooth dark backgrounds. It comes from 8-bit digitization and compression. It is there on the light parts of the background as well but is not apparent because it is a small variation on a strong signal. On the dark background it is a small variation on a low signal and is more easily detected by the eye. Regards, Ian.

[arash_hazeghi]

very nice Gail, I like the raised foot and the low angle

[gail bisson]

Thank you all for the comments.
Enrique, I like how you treated the whites. Can you tell me your workflow to achieve this?
Gail

[Satish Ranadive]

Spectacular image of cute bird with raised foot. Great low shooting angle. Love the way it pops up against beautiful BG.

Regards,
Satish.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, great low angle of capture, and love the angled pose with the raised foot. I like the colours of both the beach sand and BG rockface, makes the plover pop nicely. Congrats on achieving your vision.

[Enrique Patino]

Enrique, I like how you treated the whites. Can you tell me your workflow to achieve this?
Gail

I have found that a particular set of actions created by Tony Kuyper work very well for increasing detail in darks and lights in certain bird images. Here you have a very defined light area that falls well within the 25% brightest pixels and as presented lacks "extractable" details. I am sure NIK, Topaz filters or other plugins can do something like what I did here, but I am still learning when and how to use these TK actions that are mainly used in landscape photography... and I like what you can do with these.

please disregard the colors on this picture. It is a screenshot and it comes out w/o profile... messes up colors in PS

the color lines are just for showing the layers selected and are not pointing to anything in the action panel



In the TK action panel you can choose the blur to be used in creating luminosity layer masks set to blending mode multiply, and the triple play actions create the same set of luminosity masks set to blending mode screen. In theory they would cancel each other if selected, but because of the blur applied in the "multiply" layer masks, its effect is to bring out detail... hard to explain... same for dark areas...

I do not claim to know all the details... but for some images these actions are just what the doctor ordered... It even creates a layer that is both a separator layer and a halo removing layer... it is the active layer in the picture above. Se how I used a curve to get rid of halo in the light areas of the chest against the dark BG

[gail bisson]

Thank you Enrique for showing me what you did. I am embarrassed to say that this looks like Egyptian hieroglyphics to me!! I do not have a clue as to what all this means. I think I have "lots of learning" to do!
Gail