Another image captured from my beach chair on the north beach at Ft. Desoto County Park, Pinellas County, Florida. There were two of these ladies feeding just beyond the breaking waves. The water was clear, they were visible while chasing fish underwater. Surfacing they would spend a short time before diving again. That day the gulf was gentle with rolling swells. When the merganser was in the trough it would disappear from sight to rise again on the next swell. The gulf swells were regular having a rhythm that could be timed when the bird would appear again. This image is when the bird was at the top of a wave. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 400mm (600mm FFE)
14/2000 F/5.6 Matrix Metering 0 EV ISO 450 AWB
Post processed in Lightroom 6
Cropped for composition
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Beautiful color of the bird against the clear water. Nice sharpness with a great water droplet on the beak. I'd go in between the two, but closer to the OP. Maybe try a tiny bit of lightening of the Shadows slider would be all you need.
A nice capture. The first post appears fine to me ...in fact I like it. I have not trained myself to like images made only in the golden hour, nor do I propose doing so
Hi Joe thanks for the PM, yes 'colour' is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it may need to be tamed , but then it depends on the mood, scene, atmosphere etc you wish to create/convey. I think in instances like this, your own analysis of your PP was spot on and that on occasions it's wise just to park things for a while, then revisit.
The two posting are polls apart, however it's interesting to see that you can extract a lot more out of each version. I'm not saying this is perfect, what I'm just trying to illustrate is that with some careful tweaking with the RAW the image can be improved IMHO. I like that fact you have more emphasis to the subject via colour and so reducing the vibrancy of the 'water' and tonally dropping the exposure, I feel it appears to bring more detail out which helps, although how the overall colour reflects your original capture I have no idea. Perhaps the subject colour is more between your RP & mine??? There are a lot of avenues you can try Joe and even with a few 'tech' issues you highlighted, if you have the time you may wish to go back & explore.
Red-breasted Merganser (female)
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