Black Vulture Potrait
Hi All,
As part of weekend bird watching guide we went to Anahuac national wildlife refuge. While entering the refuge I saw a black vulture feasting on dead Armadillo.
I went close up to the vulture and took this shot
Nikon D7100, 300mm f/4 + 1.4x TC
f/11
ISO 800
1/800 sec
I should have shot this at f/8 or f/5.6 thats the only regret once I saw this shot back in my laptop.
Let me know your comments on the same.
Thanks
Krishna
Good work getting a close shot of this one, you really can see the interesting details of its head. f/8 might work good, but 5.6 might get you into depth of field issues with such a close subject. Since in a portrait, the head is the main thing to view, I would cut off most of the birds back and trim some of the background on top and right too. It looks sharp, but maybe brighten up the head and eye a bit ~ MT
I really like the angle of the head and the details that you picked up. I think I would like to blur the BG a bit more as it looks blurred, but sharp if that that makes any sense. I saw a lot of these along the road when driving from Florida to SC but didn't stop and wish I had.
Krishna: Nice photo of a tough subject (black bird); always difficult to get the details to come out. Well done. Question: where is the sun angle? I don't see catch-lights in the eye, so I'm thinking maybe the sky was overcast at the time? And I know Warren wants to blur the BG a bit more, but for some reason I quite like it the way it is - a little different. I might play around with the large-ish green leaf and darker twig on the RHS to blur or clone them out because they seem so much larger and out of place vs. the rest of the backround, but that just little nits.
I've got a couple (red and black head) vulture pics that I might put up at some point; your bird is looking a lot "cleaner" than mine who were busy working on a meal when I took their photo ....
AP
Krishna, Some good comments above. I would also crop a lot tighter if the IQ can stand up to it. I would also lighten the head without losing too much black. You have caught a beautiful sheen, that I am thinking, if you lighten the bird a bit more, you might see a touch more. I also think of trying to blur down the BG a little.
Thank you for sharing!
Andrew, Here is the story on How I got this shot.Originally Posted by Andrew Harrell
Krishna: Nice photo of a tough subject (black bird); always difficult to get the details to come out. Well done. Question: where is the sun angle? I don't see catch-lights in the eye, so I'm thinking maybe the sky was overcast at the time? And I know Warren wants to blur the BG a bit more, but for some reason I quite like it the way it is - a little different. I might play around with the large-ish green leaf and darker twig on the RHS to blur or clone them out because they seem so much larger and out of place vs. the rest of the backround, but that just little nits.
I've got a couple (red and black head) vulture pics that I might put up at some point; your bird is looking a lot "cleaner" than mine who were busy working on a meal when I took their photo ....
AP
I took like 15-20 shots with the Vulture feasting on Armadillo. I waited for few minutes and moved a bit closure to the bird. It was actually fighting with another Black Vulture and Turkey Vulture was trying to join the fun. Turkey Vulture was in the air circling around waiting for an opportunity. My Initial Idea was to have two birds (Black Vultures) in focus which is why I stopped the lens down. I was using Nikon 300mm with 1.4 teleconverter. This version does not have VR and I was shooting handheld. Based on my experience with this lens I knew I wont get lot of keepers because this is not VR Lens. so I kept firing away to get both the birds in focus. Unfortunately it did not work out.
But then it noticed me and stopped eating by the time I was quite close and got some Portrait shots of the bird. Again only 1 keeper. It was cloudy overcast day with no sun which is why I could not get any catch lights.
Thank you for your comments.
Thanks
Krishna
Glennie, Thank you for the comments. I will try to see if I can make modifications as per your comments.
Last edited by Krishna Prasad kotti; 04-25-2016 at 10:37 PM.
I love head portraits and you have a very interesting subject here. And a good job of working the subject! It looks sharp, too -- not always so easy to do hand holding. But it is quite underexposed -- have a look at the histogram.
I don't know if this is a crop, but I'd go even tighter with a vertical. The leaves on the right are competing a bit, and the sheen on the back, which lovely, pulls my eye out of the frame.
I don't remember how you process (have you said?) but I'd balance the shadows and blacks sliders in LR/ACR then see if a little Clarity would really make the face pop.
Here is a very quick illustration of a crop that I think will favor the subject more. Bringing up detail in the bird has made a mess of the BG but they can be dealt with separately in PS, as different layers.
Hi Diane,
Thank you for the details. I love this crop.
As a general thought the more I see this shot the more I think I should use fill flash. When ever I try to raise the shadows I see lots of noise and I hate to see digital noise. I haven't ventured out into using external flash so far and this is something which I will start practicing from next week.
For post processing I am using a combination of Lightroom6 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 13.
Thanks
Krishna
OK -- good to know how you're processing. It helps with critique, and I can never remember who uses what.
Fill flash is a great technique, used carefully. I hate noise, too, and it will always be there when you lighten dark areas, even at ISO 100. Exposing to the right, as much as possible without blowing out whites, and lowering exposure in processing will greatly minimize noise. Using the camera's idea of normal exposure usually results in a significantly underexposed image. The LACD screen is not an indication of exposure, but the histogram is generally very good, in combination with the blinkies. Set the camera to a neutral picture style to better simulate what you can do in raw processing. It will look flat on the screen but the histogram and blinkies will be more accurate. They come from an on-the-fly JPEG conversion that uses the picture style you ave set.
For remaining noise, using a plugin in PS, such as Nik Dfine or Neat Image can make a big improvement. The Google/Nik suite is free now, and Dfine is very easy to use in most cases, and I'm pretty sure it works as a plugin with PS Elements.
The Shadows slider in LR will go a long way toward simulating fill flash but does bring out noise.
