Brown Pelican Liftoff...

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image at Ft. De Soto County Park in Pinellas County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED image captured at 400mm
1/3200 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV -2/3 ISO 180
Post processed in Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC 2018
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Isaac Grant]

Nice take off shot. I like the wing position and the splashing water. Joe I am not sure what is going on but this image also has a strong blue cast to it. The water and the bird. I asked before but are you adding blue for some reason? This shot has a really strong cyan cast to it. The birds head is not sharp and also the edge of the flight feathers look very odd and wavy. Was that natural? I lowered the blues and the cyans a bunch to get it looking more natural. Also added some yellow to the bird to give it some warmth. This is just to try and get the colors somewhere close to where they should be.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Nice take off shot. I like the wing position and the splashing water. Joe I am not sure what is going on but this image also has a strong blue cast to it. The water and the bird. I asked before but are you adding blue for some reason? This shot has a really strong cyan cast to it. The birds head is not sharp and also the edge of the flight feathers look very odd and wavy. Was that natural? I lowered the blues and the cyans a bunch to get it looking more natural. Also added some yellow to the bird to give it some warmth. This is just to try and get the colors somewhere close to where they should be.

Hi Isaac, thank you for viewing and commenting. I am not adding blue or any other color. I did change the white balance, possibly that. Regarding the softness of the head, I checked the active focus point which was centered on the lower right bill area. So the focus should have been good for the bill and head. Maybe atmosphere/water vapor from the closeness to the water and mid morning temperatures Here is a do over full frame except for changing the ratio from 2x3 to 16x9.

[Steen Torner]

Amazing wingspan and nice image of the pelican taking off. However, I very much agree with Isaac that there is a huge problem with the color cast.
It may be that you need to add temp and tint. Below is your jpg with temp +15 and tint +16 in Lightroom.
Regards Steen

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Joe, Steve hit the nail on the head, your WB is way off, but also reducing the Blue helps prior to achieving your WB. The water under the Pelican will provide you with an area to work in to achieving your starting point - the mid grey point, which is around +19 WB, Temp +25 Tint. This will give you your three channels at equal amounts, you can then increase the WB according and adjust the blue to where you feel it looks right, but it will avoid any colour casts. Note that this is based on the JPEG, if you start afresh on the RAW, the figures do not correlate, but the area under the Pelican will be fine to sample for you WB. It's also carrying a lot of Black & Contrast, so you are getting a lot of choked shadows, clipping in those areas. I also feel you needed more DoF, say 7.1, think about the angle of the bill and how far it extends back too, the closer it comes the more DoF is required and the harder the lens/AF works.

TFS
Steve