Wandering Albatross gets close

[Nikhil Patwardhan]

Location and date:
From June of this year on a short pelagic trip at Kaikoura, New Zealand. Birds were attracted by food (fish liver) by the tour operator.

Gear and EXIF:
Olympus E-M5 and 12-50mm lens with B+W circular polarizer. 1/640s f/6.3 ISO 200 at 50mm

PP:
Uncropped. Converted with Olympus Viewer first with a Muted picture mode, Normal gradation and low noise reduction (I noticed that the water got a little silky with NR so kept it), followed by increased Vibrance and eye adjustment in Lightroom 4, finally resized in Photoshop Elements.

About the image:
This was towards end of day and the sun was getting low in the sky. Also the waves were constantly moving all the time and I have no bearing of what is level in this shot, so I've left it as is, the slight diagonal sea level and bird makes for a more dynamic image I think. The stabilization in the camera body helped a lot, also the tilting LCD was a boon. I was bent over the railing of the boat to get a sea-level shot.

[John Mack]

Nice perspective of this albatross. The bird is too big in the frame for me. Needs some room to breathe.

[Isaac Grant]

Super cool perspective here and a very unique shot. Good thinking shooting from water level. It really creates a dramatic look. Have to love shooting birds with a 12-50mm!!! And the other albatross in the back that is at the same angle is very cool as well. I agree with John that the bird is a bit too large in the frame. Also I find the image too dark. I would raise the exposure by about half a stop and see what that does. The whites of the bird are quite gray and blue so maybe adjusting the white balance will help. Also the bird looks soft to me. I would apply another gentle round of sharpening being careful not to introduce noise. You background is a touch noisy as well. Here is an example of where I think the image should go. Very hard to work on such tiny files. You can post up to 1920. Let's see this bird large!

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Nikhil, love the thinking here and like the use of a small lens.

For me, the biggest issue is the subject although filling the frame, is sloping, if you have PSCC then within less than 15 seconds or less you can have this, a subject almost horizontal. I think it makes the difference. Quickly done, but you get the idea and no messing around with edges etc.

Lets see more

TFS
Steve

[Nikhil Patwardhan]

Thank you all for the inputs

I will post a re-worked image tonight or tomorrow, I began reprocessing it but did not finish it yet. Also will post a bigger size, the guidelines do say 1200 x 1000 though on the Forums page

[Dorian Anderson]

I love albatrosses so this is really cool. I agree that this is kinda of in-between a portrait and a 'normal' shot; He's not quite close enough for a detailed headshot but
fills too much of the frame otherwise. I do like the OOF bird in the back, and I think a looser crop could be a good alternative.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I love what you went for here! I'm OK with the "slope" as I really do get the feeling of a wave gently rolling in. The BG bird is an excellent bonus. It is unfortunate that you d not have more room left and top.

[Arthur Morris]

How did you get so low on a pelagic? As noted above, this image has great potential. The huge problem is that the bird is much too big in the frame. But the image has lots of plusses ...

with love, atie

ps: Please post a JPEG that shows the complete original frame?

[Nikhil Patwardhan]

Sincere thanks to all who replied and my apologies for the late response, I appreciate your comments and feedback

Thanks Artie, uploading or linking here to the 16 MP file complains of "upload failed" or "Remote file is too large"

Reposting here at 1920 x 1440 as that's the maximum allowed upload dimensions

Btw I noticed that Olympus Viewer adds some ugly artifacts in the image when exporting a TIFF file, I had thought exporting from RAW -> 16 bit TIFF will preserve the most detail but not so. Instead exported as a 8 bit BMP file then edited in Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Adjust (in that order) and finally saved for web using Photoshop Elements after an unsharp mask.




Nikhil

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks for showing us the full frame image. Better late than never. I am guessing that you could have zoomed out a bit to give the bird more room, but perhaps you would have lost the incredible perspective that left the background bird looking like a tiny doll.

This question remains: how did you get so low?

with lovee, artie

[Nikhil Patwardhan]

Thanks Artie

Indeed, forgot to address that one. The boat from the tour operator (in Kaikoura, NZ) was pretty small with a capacity for around 8 guests, the sides were about 2 feet high, the back was shorter where the motor/engine was, so bending down over the railing was possible quite easily, I had my knees touching the floor of the boat when I clicked this. It is only an hour boat ride into the sea to get to the birds (unlike here in NY), so that's probably why they can get away with a smaller boat.