Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

[Ian Wilson]

This is the most common cockatoo species in my location. I have been using these birds to practice my flight shooting. However, they live in the forest where sunlight only penetrates for a few hours either side of mid-day making the lighting difficult against a varied background. In full sun they invariably have hard shadows; this one was captured on a day when there was high cloud.

Canon 5DIII + 300 mm f/2.8L II.

Manual, f/5.6, 1/3200 sec, ISO 1600.

Processed in DPP4 and PS Elements.

Thanks for looking, critical feedback welcome.

Ian

[gail bisson]

Lovely flight shot and well separated from the BG.
Tack sharp and great incoming position.
Like the feet and the crest as well.
I think you could get more detail out of the whites in the far wing. Do you use NIK EFEX? The Detail extractor would do the trick I think.
There is also a bit of noise in the near wing. Both issues are easily fixed in PP and are worthwhile doing in this already very nice image.
Gail

[David Salem]

I had one of these as a pet for many years, her name was Coco. Sulphur crested Cockatoos are my favorite Cockatoo species. The shot looks great and the bird is separated from the BG well and nice and sharp.
Gail brought up the other points and I think they will be an easy fix for you. Dont see may shots of these guys, especially in flight, so well done

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Ian, we normally see these guys in bird cages, so thanks for sharing a flight shot. Great fight pose with the raised wings, and pops nicely from the foliage BG. I do like the hint of the yellow crest tucked away, and agree with the others on seeing a bit of noise. Cant be easy shooting in forests with minimal light sources.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Pretty neat flight image for sure. Althoug busy I do like the BG foliage. I'm wondering what the BG would look like if the upper left area was filled in, although I understand that this is a big alteration area-wise that may or may not be within your processing ethics. TAck sharp, and a perfectly angled subject flight slightly towards us.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Lovely flight image Ian. Those high overcast days provide a wonderful light. I, like Daniel, wonder if filling in the bare spot in the upper left would improve the image. Thank you for sharing.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Ian , lovely cockatoo flight shot , you did very well with all the techs and the BKG is ok to me. Lovely processed .

TFS Andreas

[Tom van den Brandt]

Very nice shot Ian. Like the wings position and sharpness on the eye. A bit of noise under the wing but that can be solved.

Tom

[Binu John]

Fabulous flight shot of this beautiful bird, Ian! Excellent sharpness, pose, wing position and perfect exposure! You nailed the focus. TFS

[William Dickson]

A big difference from your fabulous set up shots Ian, but still as good. The bird pops out the image, with just the correct amount of pop, it's an eye catcher

[Ian Wilson]

Hi Everyone, many thanks for your generous comments and helpful feedback.

Gail, I do not have NIK EFEX detail extractor which I feel sure would 'do the trick'. However, I believe the problem is one of basic lighting adjustment. I set the white point too bright at 245 digital numbers. The quick and dirty solution, which I have adopted in this repost, is to select the far wing and reduce the brightness a little bit. This will slide the whites in the histogram to the left under the shoulder of the gamma curve where the slope of the curve is greater and hence the contrast will be greater. This will make the detail in the whites more visible. QED. I also ran a round of NR under the near wing and this has fixed that problem. I do not usually do any NR on the bird but this was one case where you were right to point out that it was needed. Thanks also to David and Stuart who supported this advice.

Daniel, I like the idea of filling in the black hole in the background and if I show this image again I will bring in some background sourced from outside the crop.

Once again, thanks everyone, your feedback is warmly appreciated.

Ian