Nice one -- I like the pose, fish, setting with the wave breaking, and clean sand. Exposure looks good, although the blacks on the back of the head could perhaps be opened slightly more. Good to see the fish's face as well. TFS
I like the exposure, details, fish facing towards us, and the faint "footsteps" in the shallow water behind the tern. I imagine there was a potential mate nearby to the right! I'm not super crazy about the straight-line shadow on the far wing, and IMO toning down the very brightest whites may do some good.
Lots to like here. A nice regal pose, great prey item (with good head angle as well!) and I really like the foot steps. Agree with Daniel that the whites could be toned down a touch. I also think that the colors are a little on the thin side. I think there is more color depth and detail there to be had with some tweaks to the levels and saturation. Did a quick redo of your file. I decreased the mid tones, adjusted highlights on the chest (won't look natural when done after sharpening and compression, but just showing a bit where it could be in terms of brightness), added some saturation to the background (that does not work well after NR, etc is done on a background, only wanted to bring out some more blue in the water but it will not look natural when done after the fact) and ran a Detail Extractor/Tonal Contrast layer at 25% opacity on the bird. Just trying to give an idea where I think the file could go and the detail that is there. Of course all of this work is best done on the full res TIFF.
Last edited by Isaac Grant; 04-09-2018 at 08:44 PM.
John - it looks fantastic. The prey is a scaled sardine. Nice exposure, but I agree with the repost..it seems these guys can be properly exposed and have higher whites in the 230's or 240's and then you sharpen or breath on the shot and the whites are in the 250's. My final step on these is to add a levels adjustment just to bring the mid level from 1.00 to .97. I think that helps tame the whites post sharpening.
Great looking frame with lots of nice details, beautiful prey item and over all good exposure.
Isaacs repost brings it all together. Well done
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Great bird, great fish. What bugs me the most is the line of the breaking wave through the top of the bird's head ...
with love, artie
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