Reddish Egret (Dark Morph) Fishing

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image of a Reddish Egret fishing in the surf last year at Ft. Desoto 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, camera and lens supported by a monopod
1/3200 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV -1/3 ISO 360 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 400mm
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2020 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Joe, I like the framing and the wings up and head about to strike. The trailing water around the legs and small bow wave adds to the movement of the bird. I'm just going numbers but increasing the Temp and adding a bit more in the Tint slider the subject looks bit warmer, however never seeing this bird I could well be off point. I think you may have upped the Blue in a Global adjustment as it's showing in the wing, reducing it there may help. I'm not sure if critical sharpness is on the head, and perhaps you have been more reserved in sharpening, however there is more detail in the plumage which you can tease out, increasing sharpness does help, albeit the head in the RP is bordering on a bit too sharp. The blue of the water is a personal taste. Hope this helps.

Cheers
Steve

[kevin Hice]

Good morning Joe. I like this alot,unfortunate the head isn't sharper. Not that you didn't have enough shutter.I think the focus was back on the body and with the slanted head it was out of dof. almost had to be on the head neck area. Heck I would have pulled the trigger too for a nice action shot.
Water droplets and spray are nice . Maybe would take some off the bottom guessing did't have more at the top. TFS

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Steve and Kevin, thank you for viewing and commenting. I could warm the image but after checking with the eyedropper for WB I thought the image was pretty true to the colors presented at the time of capture. I have a 18% grey card on the desk, in the image I look for a area of tone similar and check that with the eyedropper to see what the RGB readings are. If all three are very near the same value I do not change the WB. On this image most of the greys were indicating that I would have to raise the blues which I did not want to do because the color of the water was very blue. No global adjustment of the blue, vibrance raised a bit, that may have made the water bluer but when I turned it off after reading Steve's comment there did not seem to be much of a change. The sharpening was conservative and can be raised which I have done. In Steve's edit it appears the contrast is higher, I raised that also in a edit of the image.

Focusing on these birds when they are feeding is difficult at best. The bird is running at full speed, turning abruptly and flapping the wings all trying to keep up with the fleeing baitfish. I am posting a screen capture of the original image. The focus point is on the lower breast upper shoulder of the bird. The depth of field is 0.98m or 38.58 inches, more than enough for this birds head to be in the same plane of focus as the shoulder. When capturing a image of a bird running as with a image of a bird in flight it is depth of field that is relied on rather than say putting the focus point on the eye, which cannot be done. The one thing I might have done differently would have been to use Group Autofocus Mode rather than Single Focus point. But I was sitting on the beach, I had the gimbal head on the monopod unlocked and the tripod collar loose so I was able to follow the bird quite well. I don't know why the head would appear not as sharp as the rest of the bird, maybe contrast, maybe different feather types. Anyways, thanks for viewing and commenting.

P.S. Another thought, maybe compressing the 16 bit TIFF to a small JPEG?

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Joe, in response to the above I just use it as a starting basis and I have always said from there you take it in whatever direction. Vibrance tends to work more in adding Yellow IMHO, so I would be surprised. Re the blue I just thought there was too much in that wing, hence making the assumption it was a Global adjust.

Contrast, unless controlled firstly when imported, LR will make a pig of things and yes I did use a Curves adjust just to pinch things a bit more, I also added some Channel Curve blend modes just to get some more tone/detail. Joe the bird looks angled, rear stepping back, head stepping forward, so could it be, it just ran out of DoF? Compressing won't affect anything, it's either sharp or not.

Appreciate the dialog, now off to see if a Tawny owl may shot itself...

All the best.
Steve

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Steve, thanks for coming back, good luck with the Tawny Owl. A couple things, I have been struggling with my glasses, the adjustment was off and no matter what I could not seem to correct how they became bent. I bought a new frame same as the old one and put the lenses in that. All seems ok now, I can even use the glasses I had made for the computer. Regarding colors, I do not have the training or the eye for colors that you have, I envy what you can see. So I in most instances trust that the camera with a few adjustments captured the scene/bird as it was. I don't do much in the way of color correcting unless there is a noticeable color cast, then I try to remove that. I need to pick your brain sometime regarding tone curves. I use them sparingly mostly to add contrast or remove contrast but not much else. Thanks for your help, I am trying to get a handle on it all.

[Steve Kaluski]

Regarding colors, I do not have the training or the eye for colors that you have, I envy what you can see. So I in most instances trust that the camera with a few adjustments captured the scene/bird as it was.

Hi Joe, many thanks for the kind words and yes, I guess in my previous life part of what I did does dovetail nicely into PP. Keeping the monitor calibrated each month is paramount and make sure updates are checked for if the software doesn't flag it up.

Colour is very subjective and at the end of the day if you feel the image when imported reflects the capture to your recollection, then where is the problem, unless as you say there is a colour cast. As you know I strip out any camera/adobe 'enhancements, as I want an image to be as dull as ditchwater, I'm not a lover of heavily saturated images because to me nature is really like that in say Wildlife, but it is at times in Avian, but again just my take.

At the end of the day Joe, most if not all adjustments are a form of Contrast based, irrespective of how they are described, LR Temp & Tint are basically Lab based adjustments and if I took Colour profiles from one raw converter and dropped it into a competitor you will get a difference, interesting... so it can start to get complicated. Tone curve either linear or parabolic do different things, but all generally work on an S curve, the great thing now is that with the cursor everyone can play and have fun with Curves. Personally I prefer PS rather than LR, but depending on the file I made do a small tweak within either, or perhaps both. Within PS you have Blend Modes, Opacity & Fill and so with Layers & Masks this then becomes a fantastic tool, but it's knowing which and how much is the hard part, but all comes in time, within two weeks if not a week you would become proficient. I'm reluctant to give any step by step breakdown, as someone want help on a file years, but then applied it to all and wondered why they were so different and so this is where each file needs to be treated separately albeit at times with minor tweaks.

WB yes I could show how with pushing sliders in LR, but your eyes need to be discerning with Blue & Magenta, or via PS with a Threshold layer to find the mid grey, but I still think the eye dropper is best, but then once I've scooted it into PS I might just tweak it again.

Joe, wished you were closer as with 2 hours we would nail the whole shooting match, with some extras. let me have a ponder.

Steve

[John Mack]

The dynamic pose is right on. The light is pretty nice as well. Framing looks good to me. I enjoyed viewing this one.