Great capture, Nick. Like the full up wing position, toes on left foot nicely submerged, and droplets of water add. Nice handling of the whites and what a lovely BG.
A beauty. Exposure looks spot-on, background is gorgeous, and wing position excellent. Great timing. A bit of room top and right would bring it up a notch, IMO.
Fantastic Nick! I'll echo what others have already said: awesome light, perfect exposure of the whites, good feather detail, wing position, catchlight in the eye, head angle, all good! A bit of extra room at the top and to the right and it would be perfect.
The colors are really beautiful and the background is perfect. Love thew wing position. I'm surprised that others have not mentioned this but the colors of the bird are off. The whites are mostly grayed over and the whole bird has a blue cast. I would also run some more noise reduction on the background.
Thanks for the comments and constructive criticism, its very much appreciated. I have added some canvas to the top and right of the image, I have also moved the blue / yellow colour balance slider in the midtones in favour of yellow by 18. I have also given the background another round of noise reduction.
I think this is a step in the right direction but the bird still has a strong blue cast. I did the following to the bird. Did a crude selection. Went into hue/saturation and selected the blue channel.Then lowered the blues by 100% and it did very little. Then I went into the NIK software. Went to the remove color cast filter and slid it to the blues. Kept opacity at 100% and that did a better job of removing much of the strong color cast. In selective color I then went to the white channel and reduced the blacks in the whites by at 10 points. Then on the background I ran some more neat image NR and I cloned out the blue area on the lower right of the image in the water. Too much work on the background that has caused posterization. Best for you of course to go the the full res tiff and do this stuff. Same goes with the bird. Any changes will be much better done on the original.
Interestingly, I just finished processing a few images from last year taken with my 1dx of terns and gulls that also had very strong blue casts like this one. I will post a few of them soon. I am really not sure what causes this to happen in certain situations.
Nick - I'm glad I didn't miss this one. Beautiful shot with gorgeous light as the others have said. With Isaac's help it looks even better. Amazing light, colors, BG, water reflections, upwing landing pose, sharpness. You've put a lot of variables together in this shot. Great job.
I thought I would give it another go. In DPP I used a warmer white balance than before then in Photoshop I used the dodge tool to lighten the dark parts of the under wing. Thanks for the time you have spent on this Isaac and hopefully helping me to improve my image.
The 1st thing I thought when I opened up this image was how beautiful of a pose this was and how much of a blue cast was on the bird.
Looks like Isaac's repost really made a big difference and your last one is looking good too. Great looking background also. Well done
Come join me for a Custom Raptor Workshop starting this November 2019- January 2020.
P.M. me to inquire on dates, pricing and availabilities. Thank You. www.davidsalemphotography.com
Thanks David. I think this web site has done what it says on the tin and educated by constructive criticism, I'm grateful for Issac's observations and ideas.
Black-headed Gull
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote