American Oystercatcher at sunset #2

[gail bisson]

This is the same AMOC I posted earlier but image taken about 40 minutes later.
The sun was just setting.
Canon 1DX
600mm and 1.4 x
ISO 1600 F 5.6 SS 1/640
Processed in DPP4 ( increased brightness by 0.5 and healthy crop to vertical and NR as per Arash's guide)and exported to CS5 for NR to BG only then converted to JPEG and a bit of USM ( 20% at 0.3 pixels) applied
Comments and critiques always appreciated and learned from with thanks,
Gail

[John Rowell]

Gorgeous soft light and colors to compliment this cool pose. Exposure is great and all details up to your high standard. The low shooting angle is just right. My eye keeps pulling right to that one feather touching its bill, would be tempted to remove. Was this on Sanibel?

[Joseph Przybyla]

Lovely light, I especially like how the background colors are soft pastels. Exposure and detail spot on, if mine I might lower the saturation of the color of the beak a tad. Thank you for sharing.

[gail bisson]

Hi John,
This was at Bunche Beach. The feather you speak of, is actually being held by his beak as he preens.
Gail

Gorgeous soft light and colors to compliment this cool pose. Exposure is great and all details up to your high standard. The low shooting angle is just right. My eye keeps pulling right to that one feather touching its bill, would be tempted to remove. Was this on Sanibel?

[John Rowell]

Guess my eyes haven't fully woken up yet, your explanation puts a whole different emphasis on why you left the feather. Thanks! Will be heading to Florida in a couple of weeks and hope to get some good opportunities.

[Lorant Voros]

Light is magic here; I love the pose and one leg up, the nice details in the white. Saturation is a tricky part..for the the magic light creates interesting colors. I like it very much as it is. TFS.

[Grace Scalzo]

Totally sweet light and a superb pose with the tiny feather in his beak and our view of the tucked up foot. Well processed and for this presentation, I see no IQ issues from the crop. Lovely.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, love the light in this, and the OC is certainly in a twisted pose - nothing wrong with that. Good DOF on him too, and I like the raised foot. Looks great for a 'healthy' crop.

[Ivan Sjögren]

Beautiful shot Gail! I like the vertical crop which works well together with the pose. Interesting pose, with the raised foot and the preening going on. I think the saturation is okay as is. Great light and colors too.

[Bill Dix]

Bunche Beach is a real treat, and this captures those pink and blue Florida colors beautifully. Great Oystercatcher pose, with your usual fine detail. Lovely light, comp, POV. Wish I were there.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gail gorgeous light , color and tone in this image . Great work . Love the IQ you produced .

TFS Andreas

[keith mitchell]

Gail sitting in the cold and damp UK makes me green with envy and wishing I was back in Florida, you have really captured the lovely light over there, what I like most is that relaxed preening pose, great work indeed.

Keith.

[Mike Poole]

Beautiful Gail, this has all the boxes ticked - light, pose, pov, details, great piece of work

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Stunning image Gail. I like the colours, the soft light, the low POV and the pose is simply superb.

[Karl Egressy]

Excellent pose captured in sweet light Gail.

[Robert Kimbrell]

Super light you captured here Gail. I love the colors in this image, very pleasing to the eye, I work about 3 miles from Bunch Beach , I just got my parking sticker so I can go after work, and not worry about feeding the parking machines.

[christopher galeski]

Beautiful image,magic light,good details,nice pose.well done.

[Robert vanMierop]

Nice vert crop. Great detail too, on OC's I've been noticing the wrinkles around the knees (not appealing on us btw) and those OC toenails.

[Binu John]

Fabulous shot, Gail! The light and POV look great. Excellent composition, pose, details and exposure. TFS

[dankearl]

Well, pretty much a perfect cool pose...
The tucked foot really looks nice...

[David Salem]

One of the coolest aspects of the shot is the feather in the beak. Hard to get that last little bit of feather caught on camera. I always try to get this shot, but have very few good ones. That sweet evening light, the nice look back pose, and the perfect techs, make up for a really nice frame. Well done Gail.

[annmpacheco]

I like the vertical and the sweet light that warms and mesmerizes one viewing your image. Quite the balancing act to attend to the lone feather that really puts this over the top. I have Arash's DPP guide and wonder if you could explain to me your next set of actions? You wrote "NR to BG only then converted to JPEG and a bit of USM ( 20% at 0.3 pixels) applied", how do I apply NR to BG only in PS6? and sorry what does USM 20% at 0.3 pixels mean. I feel like I am half way there after DPP and then I open the tiff image in PS6, I usually go to Nik detail and then Nik NR, image size, then convert to jpeg? any help please? thanks, ann

[gail bisson]

Thank you all for your helpful comments and critiques.
Ann- to apply noise reduction to the BG only you select the bird with the quick selection tool at a size of 8 pixels (i think it is the third from the top on
LHS of menu) then inverse the selection then go to filter and select noise reduction and apply the appropriate amount to taste. With the 1 DX I rarely need more than a strength of 5 or 6. Make sure you zoom in to make sure your selection is perfect)
If you use NIK DE then you will only need to sharpen the jpeg a bit. Once you have converted your TIFF to JPEG I used Artie's Digital Basics guide ( for sharpening images for web for BPN size of 1200 x 900 ) but once I started using DE I decreased the amount of sharpening significantly from Artie's recommended 50 to 60 % to 20 to 30 % at pixel size of 0.3. I hope this is making sense. So easy to do and explain if you were sitting beside me!!
if you are stuck let me know and maybe we can skype and share a screen if you have a MAC.
gail

[annmpacheco]

Thank you Gail very much, I have sent you an email...