Merganser on a Stroll

[Jay Ing]

Had a lovely shoot at a local lake on MLK day. The light presented wonderful reflections and greenery and flowers in the water. Here, a Merganser happened by.

Details: Nikon D850/Sigma 500/4, 1/3200, 5.6, ISO 900, HH, C1P (raw), PS CCC 2018 Neat Image NR, SS on Output.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely colours but the head and bill doesn't look pin sharp to me, the side and wing looks fine.

[arash_hazeghi]

something went wrong in the processing I think

[Randy Stout]

Jay:

I agree with Jon and Arash. Head just isn't quite crisp enough, and the colors seem unrealistic, like the saturation was too high. Obviously I was't there, but I haven't every seen colors quite that vivid.

Cheers

Randy

[Jay Ing]

Jay:

I agree with Jon and Arash. Head just isn't quite crisp enough, and the colors seem unrealistic, like the saturation was too high. Obviously I was't there, but I haven't every seen colors quite that vivid.

Cheers

Randy

I'll have to go back through and look for any shots that nail the head better. I'm not sure - but my guess is Arash was noting the mistake in my applying NR. I applied it (perhaps is too much of a rush/too lazy.... nah, not me :)...) to the water from foreground to background and this did some strange things to the water. As for the colors though, that's them... nature is sometimes just amazing, right?... here's a frame (didn't check but probably not the exact one I used before but from the same series of shots) only imported into C1P and kicked out as jegs. Right now, the greenery is just bursting around this lake and its mostly all bright greens, but for a few flowers that are very vidid...and... a few homes around the lake are painting bright... when the light is just right... the commingling it spectacular. In fact, on the newer Merganser photo I posted I wish the bkg was less vivid so the splashes and colors of the bird stood out better. I wanted to tone them down but my PS skills are still very nascent.