Puffin Portrait

[William Dickson]

Canon 1DX
f/4 500mm with 1.4
f/10
1/1000
ISO 800

This was captured on Staffa Island, west coast of Scotland. The Puffins were gathering nest material, ripping out tufts of grass, and taking it into the burrows. I sort of felt sorry for this one, holding the one piece of withered grass.

Will

[Marina Scarr]

OMG this portrait is truly outstanding. The feather details are out of this world. Love that slate BG.

[William Dickson]

Thanks Marina, it was a truly remarkable experience watching these small guys scurrying about, collecting the grasses, and taking it into their burrows.

[Mike Hitchen]

A great portrait, William and it shows the colours superbly. Was this a significant crop? Te black on the neck looks a tad smeared.

[Arthur Morris]

Agree. The face and eye detail is truly amazing, especially the iris. I love the withered grass and I am sure the bird did too :)

Makes you laugh at the blinds on Machias ....

with love, artie

[William Dickson]

Thanks guys, yes Mike it was a fair sized crop. it was one of the first images I captured on the island, until I discovered I could get real close. I liked the BG and the grass, on this one, I thought it was different. We were so close, my wife was laying on her stomach and using her iPad to video them :)

Hi Artie, thanks for that, I had to Google Machias. Looks good.

Will

[Tim Foltz]

William awesome detailed portrait of one of my favorite birds.

-Tim

[David Salem]

"Rockstar" Portrait William!!

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Bill, I was thinking that you knew of Machais ...A two hour boat ride, then packed into a cramped blind off sun angle for 45 minutes so as not to "scare" the puffins. with love, artie

[Joseph Przybyla]

Wow... love it. All's been said, thank you for sharing.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Well caught Will I think you have a great image.
I am sorry to be at variance with every one - don't take it personally - it may well be be who is simply wrong, but something doesn't look quite right to me. Is there a colour cast on the head?

[William Dickson]

Well caught Will I think you have a great image.
I am sorry to be at variance with every one - don't take it personally - it may well be be who is simply wrong, but something doesn't look quite right to me. Is there a colour cast on the head?

I can't see any cast on my monitor Jon

[Mike Poole]

Superb details on the face here Will, and the nesting material is a nice added bonus

Mike

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Magnificent portrait, William. Wonderful detail, colors, nesting material, and an outstanding slate grey BG. Well captured.

Geoffrey




http://http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

[Jonathan Ashton]

I can't see any cast on my monitor Jon

Will my apologies, I have misinterpreted, nothing wrong with the colours, my mistake, the cheek seemed sort of grey or slate coloured to me, I now think it is purely the light and it's angle.

[Isaac Grant]

I have come back to this image many times. I agree that the pose and the details are very nice. Love the crop and the grass in the beak that are set off very nicely by that dark background. However I still keep coming back to the face and the neck/chest. Something about the face seems off to me. Instead of a soft and natural appearance it has a bit of a plastic like look to me. And the black feathers of the throat and whites of the upper chest are very soft and without fine feather details. That should be in focus as the bill in front of it and the back of the head behind it are both sharp.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I have come back to this image many times. I agree that the pose and the details are very nice. Love the crop and the grass in the beak that are set off very nicely by that dark background. However I still keep coming back to the face and the neck/chest. Something about the face seems off to me. Instead of a soft and natural appearance it has a bit of a plastic like look to me. And the black feathers of the throat and whites of the upper chest are very soft and without fine feather details. That should be in focus as the bill in front of it and the back of the head behind it are both sharp.

That is precisely what I though Isaac but I came to the conclusion that it was the quality and angle of light... and I must admit in view of the fact that I checked colour balance and no one else mentioned anything I thought I must be wrong.

[William Dickson]

Here is a crop of the original RAW, without any adjustment. Maybe this will help.

[William Dickson]

And here is the full sized RAW, you can see why I cropped it so tight

[Isaac Grant]

I think it was something in the processing for sure. The post with no adjustments seems better to me on the face and the blacks of the neck have more details and do not look smoothed out. The bird has the soft and natural look to it (not soft as in not sharp but soft as in the texture of the feathers) In addition the whites of the chest seem whiter and have a bit less of a bluish cast on my screen than the original post. Wouldn't it be great if we all the same screens and all calibrated the same so we did not have so much variation in what we see! This is such a pretty shot that I think it is worth it to revisit the original and make some adjustments.

[William Dickson]

I think it was something in the processing for sure. The post with no adjustments seems better to me on the face and the blacks of the neck have more details and do not look smoothed out. The bird has the soft and natural look to it (not soft as in not sharp but soft as in the texture of the feathers) In addition the whites of the chest seem whiter and have a bit less of a bluish cast on my screen than the original post. Wouldn't it be great if we all the same screens and all calibrated the same so we did not have so much variation in what we see! This is such a pretty shot that I think it is worth it to revisit the original and make some adjustments.

Thanks for your observations Isaac, I should add, that I am using a 27" iMac 5K, it looks real good, on my monitor. Its only the second 'Rockstar' I have had from David Salem, so I am fair chuffed with it.

Will

[Isaac Grant]

I guess it could be the monitor Will. Davis is usually spot on. I did check it on my monitor and my iPhone 7 as well and had the same impression on both but who knows.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Will the RAW looks great to me, there has to be something in the processing, I think the crop is too large that could well have a lot to do with it. I have taken the liberty of reposting the jpeg of your RAW WDYT? I just made a few tweaks to the brightest areas and minor alteration to saturation.

[William Dickson]

Hi Jon, thanks for taking the time doing this. Yes, it looks good, just thought, when I went to process, the BG looked a wee bit messy! I like it, but I like my close crop better.

Will