I captured this image using the car as a blind driving along Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive, Apopka, 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
1/1250 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 800 AWB HH
Post processed in Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC 2018
Cropped from horizontal to vertical for composition and presentation
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Nice over the shoulder pose you have here. And the car helped you get nice and close as well. If being honest, this one does not work for me though and I do not think it is up to your usual high standards. The light was very harsh here. The bird looks thin, The branch where the bird was sitting on didn't help you and the branch behind it doesn't either. Plus the whole belly is shadowed as the light was too far to the right. I know that those roads are narrow and the ditches are deep and filled with alligators too. You have to be very lucky to be able to get on the perfect sun angle there. I have driven those roads quite a few times.
I agree with Isaac that the image looks very "thin". You definitely need to adjust your levels blacks.
I like the eye level view and the perch.
I would have stopped the car too, to try to get a nice image of this guy/gal,
Gail
I agree that the image is very thin and as Issac and Gail mentioned it needs to be bumped up in the blacks using levels.
Looks like it was overexposed and not brought back down by adding blacks.
Remember once you bring down the exposure on an overexposed image, most of the time you still have to deal with the bleached out colors.
Here I reduced the exposure by a few points, then moved the left slider in levels to the right by 15 points to get the blacks looking better. That was it, but I couldn't help myself from quickly cleaning up some of the branches and twigs. Nice looking bird too.
Last edited by David Salem; 03-16-2018 at 12:10 PM.
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I agree that the image is very thin and as Issac and Gail mentioned it needs to be bumped up in the blacks using levels.
Looks like it was overexposed and not brought back down by adding blacks.
Remember once you bring down the exposure on an overexposed image, most of the time you still have to deal with the bleached out colors.
Here I reduced the exposure by a few points, then moved the left slider in levels to the right by 15 points to get the blacks looking better. That was it, but I couldn't help myself from quickly cleaning up some of the branches and twigs. Nice looking bird too.
Hey David, thank you for viewing and editing the image and explaining how you did it. Looks really good, I shall work on it and repost. Thanks again, very much appreciated.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Hi all, here is the edit and repost that I promised. I should have done it for the original post, I plead laziness. Thanks to all who viewed and commented.
Last edited by Joseph Przybyla; 03-17-2018 at 08:43 AM.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams