Another image of Nazca Boobies. One of a large number of images where the sunlit whites isn't toasted to badly. Unfortunately I have a large number of images which are very nice except for the burnt out areas.
Nikon D800, 500mm @f/7.1, 1/250 sec, ISO400
All comments welcome.
Wow! This is a very touching image in wonderful light!! It is so frustrating when whites are too hot to handle, but this one is just fine. The small bit of brightest reflected light on the right shoulder of the bird on the left is not a problem for me -- it's almost a specular highlight. I like the bit of blue reflected from the sky to complement the warm tones, although some people would probably choose to neutralize the blues a little more.
If you want to stay with this aspect ratio, as with the previous post, you might consider coming in a little from the top and left, as the composition feels a little weighted toward the right, but that's not a major issue. There is a small dark blob along the bottom border on the rightmost bird that you might clone out.
I always have a question how much detail to try to eke out of bright tones, and it's easy to overdo it. If I were working further on this image that's the one thing I would think about, for the shaded whites, but might come back to this version after trying. I had a look just using a small amount of Detail Extractor on the JPEG, just to see what might be there. I masked it to just the two necks with a fairly large soft-edged brush.
Courtship
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