Begging Common Tern

[Grace Scalzo]

1/2500, f 6.3, iso800
Canon 1dx, 600f4 + 1.4tc + ground pod

[Satish Ranadive]

Marvellous portrait in beautiful lights, Grace.
Absolutely superb exposures black and whites. Tack sharp where it needed. Very pleasant colour scheme.
Love the open beak and tongue.

Regards,
Satish.

[Lorant Voros]

Super to see the tong and the fluffed feathers. Probably you were too close to stop down enough to have the full body in focus. It could use some NR on the background. Well done.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the ruffled feathers, visible tongue, IQ, detail, BG and beautiful light. Excellent image Grace!

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Grace, lovely portrait and I like the fact the head is slightly turned to the viewer, the open beak and 'tongue' just adds to the capture in gorgeous light.

Grace is this a large crop, the noise is quite evident and very surprising at ISO800, as this is my default setting I'm just curious? The wind swept plumage on the back looks noisy too, so i wonder if you have you lifted the darks a little or use Detail Ext which may have highlighted any noise in the darks/shadow areas, but agree with Lorant that a small amount of NR would help in the BKG area.

TFS
Steve

[Grace Scalzo]

Thanks everyone. Steven, not a large crop, maybe took away 1/3 at most. Did not lift the darks, all I did was a levels adjustment and sharpened. My fault on the noise...I prepared a larger size of this and it looks fine. When I reduced it to fit BPN I got some posturizing happening and a fresh look this am, it looks oversharpened to me. No detail extractor was used. I didn't use any nr on this, certainly will for a final version, if I keep it.

If you notice, I didn't write anything about this picture...what I was curious about was the depth of field. I purposefully shot it this way and am curious as to how you like it. Lorant is the only one who mentioned it.

[Steve Kaluski]

No detail extractor was used. I didn't use any nr on this, certainly will for a final version, if I keep it.

Thanks for the feedback Grace, at 800 you shouldn't need any NR but your call. BTW,, was it because of the light you used Spot metering rather than say Evaluated? Just always interested to hear others thoughts & views .

Thanks

[dankearl]

Cool perspective, and the tongue is nice....

[Karl Egressy]

Cool image, Grace. Love the open beak and light.

[Mike Poole]

Sweet light and a great pose.

Given your proximity to the tern, I'm not sure even stopping down a couple of stops would get everything sharp given the body angle, so for me the shallow DoF just points me more towards the head

Mike

[David Salem]

Nice close-up of this begging baby. I wouldn't want the whole bird in focus as I like the DOF that creates a crisper, sharper and stronger view of the head.
Love the details and especially the tongue showing so well. Noise don't bother me at all. Well done Grace

[Grace Scalzo]

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on this image . To answer Steve's question in Pane #7, I almost always spot meter. In nearly every situation I can find a mid tone which I place on the null point of the meter, a white, to which I add light, or a black to which I subtract. I then tweak to taste, and I do usually expose to the right. I sometimes play games when out in the field and meter stuff even when not photographing as I want to be so accurate and quick with determining my exposure that I don't have to pause and check my histogram after I fire off a test shot. Of course, your subject has to be in the same light as what you chose to spot meter off of, if choosing something other than the subject itself. I found with evaluative metering, there is too much to remember....add + 2 to a blue sky at certain times of the day, less at others, just too much. I never have to think of size of subject in frame and its impact on exposure. Spot metering allows me to find something in the frame that I can place accurately on the meter in nearly all situation. I learned this from Charles Glatzer and it has served me very well. Of course human error has resulted in some images hitting the trash . :) There are many ways to determine exposure of course, this being just one.