Black Skimmer

[Alex Becker]

Hi all,

Another Black Skimmer image from Florida. In post I cropped about 20% off the image, removed an OOF head of another skimmer (above the white reflection), made some tonal adjustments and added some sharpening. It was not a great sun angle so I tried to raise the shadow between the head and neck.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm f/5.6 at 500mm
Specs: 1/5000 ISO 1400 f/5.6

Thank you for looking,
Alex

[David Salem]

Nice banking pose and a great looking HA. The sun angle isn't the best and the light looks harsh but I think you made the best of you had to work with. You can ease up on the shutter speed for these guys. I rarely use a ss of more that 1/3200th for most BIF stuff . This will give you a it more room to stop down and keep the ISO a bit lower too. Well done. Maybe a bit more sharpening too.

[Alex Becker]

Thank you for the comments! I agree re: the SS -- I hadn't photographed these guys before so I overcompensated at first before dropping down to 1/3200. Looking back I wish I had gone to f/8 for a bit. Added some more sharpening in the repost.

Thanks!

[David Seymour]

Hi Alex, for me this image has a great crispness to it. I think that despite the relatively harsh lighting, the bird is well lit and at a good angle to the sun direction. A couple of compositional elements I reckon are important: the small partial wing reflection at left bottom shows just how close the bird is to the water, something lost if you hold your thumb over it; and the white reflection lower right acts to balance the composition within the framing used - again I think the image loses something if you put your hand over that element. The only thing I'd do is clone out the 10 or so small round OOF specular highlights in the background.
Cheers, David