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Great action and pose! It looks sharp with very good whites and mid-tones. I'd only wish for a little more room behind the bird.
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BPN Member
All the techs look good and you have a good feel for processing. I am going to get a little more critical in my comments since you are progressing nicely so I hope you don't mind. When I first starting shooting this image would have been a keeper and one I would have been proud of now it would be a first edit delete the two issues I have with it is the angle the subject is taking in the frame which is angling away from the viewer and out of the frame ideally you would want the Heron moving towards the viewer and into the frame. I know its hard to control what a wild bird will do but thats why we put the time in the field to get everything to fall in line. The second issue is the line in the BG cutting your subjects head in half it is a distraction and something that can be controlled in the field by lowering or raising your shooting angle. Controlling the BG is a major decision in my thought process when setting up an image if i cant get a good BG I will not press the shutter if you look at the image of my accomplish photographers you will never see distracting elements in the BG.
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Post a Thank You. - 1 Thanks
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How are you burning? What are your slider moves in ACR and then what are you doing in PS?
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Thank you Don. I welcome and hopefully learn from criticism. This would be by far the best image of this bird I have ever taken. So I will be keeping it a bit longer until a better one comes along. Yes. I have seen and know about distracting BGs and lines that disect heads etc. Unfortunately, my time in the field is limited, so I take what I can get. But you are right again Don, I could have laid flat on the sand. As far as him moving into the frame; time is also my limitation here.
I do appreciate your time in commenting on my posts! I have learnt so much in a few short weeks.
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Thank you Diane. I generally just play with the sliders until the image looks about right
In ACR
Exp +1.1
Contrast + 13
Highlights - 100
Shadows +100
Whites +36
Blacks +100
Clarity 0
Vibrance +4
Saturation - Aquas -32
Blues -19
In PS I have desaturated magenta to -74. Added contrast of +7. I would have burned (and dodged, but mainly burn) feathers that faded into others to give a bit more depth and shape. Finished off with NR on BG and sharpening of bird.
You can probably tell by all the above ramblings that I really have no idea what I'm doing. It's more arse than class that I ever get a half decent image.
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Keep playing -- that's how you learn! Your best ally is a good monitor that is well-calibrated. Without seeing the raw file I can't be sure, but I see one thing I'd question with your slider settings. I would not mix an increase in contrast with full moves of the shadows and highlights sliders. Try a reset of contrast to zero and see if you need less movement of shadow and highlight. If it looks a bit flat, use a small amount of Clarity (midtone contrast), and often a little Vibrance after that. Then use the black and white sliders to tweak the ends of the histogram.
The magenta cast (really just a trace) might be fixed by the slightest tweak of the Tint slider. It is very sensitive and really needs a vernier scale. Or just type numbers if moving it is not precise enough. But the color may just be subtly reflected from the water and you are bringing it out by stretching the tonal values in the whites. I love the ability of ACR/LR to do that -- it is a serious improvement over other commonly-used converters. You want to pull out as much tonal separation as you can in the raw stage -- you have much more overhead there than in PS.
It's better not to have to increase exposure - exposing to the right and bringing exposure down will give much lower noise. But with white birds it's difficult to get it right, even with manual exposure, which I see you used. (When I can remember to grab it, I've taken to carrying the old light meter that I used to rely on in film days. I use it to meter incident light.)
I can relate to your satisfaction with this image -- I would keep it too! Keep shooting!!
Last edited by Diane Miller; 11-22-2015 at 12:17 PM.
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Post a Thank You. - 1 Thanks
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Thanks again Diane! My monitor is calibrated, so that's a start. I will try resetting the contrast to 0 and see what happens. You are full of great suggestions. Until reading the "ebook" by Michael Frye (that you suggested to Mike Hanson of this forum) I was a bit conservative with the sliders. But now I realise how much I can get out of them. I'll try keying in numbers for the tint slider which has given me ugly results in the past.
Thank you for the time and effort you put into this Forum. I have become a bit addicted; the ETL is beginning to look like a GP (Glennie Passier) Forum! LOL
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Welcome to the playpen! Let us know what you find with the different settings.
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BPN Member
Just tagging along here. What's the book?
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http://www.michaelfrye.com/books/books.html "Landscapes in LR". There's a couple of others that look very interesting as well.