Chicken Little

[Vaughn Larsen]

Female Lesser Prairie Chicken flying into a LEK in Eastern Colorado. ACR for WB, lifted shadows slightly. PS crop and reposition, noise reduction and unsharp mask 40 % 3.3 radius.

Nikon D500
1/3200 f8 ISO 1100
500 mm w 1.4

comments and feedback appreciated

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Vaughn, I like the flying pose and head angle. Your techs look good, but the image appears very under exposed, even now and guess this is why you had to lift the shadows creating a lot of visible noise. As presented I like bit more space below and a fraction less above. Your sharpening amount isn't bad albeit perhaps a few more rounds, but your radius is excessive and should be way below 1.

Are you shooting ETTR (Expose to the Right) to maximise better data capture and in turn helps with noise and ultimately an almost perfect exposure. If not search on Artie's blog on how to do this.

TFS
Steve

[David Roach]

What a beauty, Vaughn and fantastic pose and BG. Yes to brighter and some noise issues. TFS

[Brian Sump]

Vaughn, excellent job to grab this one! I love that they're called Prairie Chickens, lol.

So yeah, aside from some visible noise the subject is sharp across the image which is great. Bkg is creamy and complimentary.

A touch looser crop from all side would probably enhance the viewer's experience IMO.

Nicely done my friend!

[Vaughn Larsen]

What a beauty, Vaughn and fantastic pose and BG. Yes to brighter and some noise issues. TFS

Thanks David - brighter worked - noise? Maybe a Canon camera.

[Vaughn Larsen]

Vaughn, excellent job to grab this one! I love that they're called Prairie Chickens, lol.

So yeah, aside from some visible noise the subject is sharp across the image which is great. Bkg is creamy and complimentary.

A touch looser crop from all side would probably enhance the viewer's experience IMO.



Nicely done my friend!

Thanks Brian - will see shat I can do with the cropping.

You should give this experience a shot if you get the chance, I got to go thanks to Covid - International travel left a blind open . total darkness birds making noise all around you while your in the blind. Then the sun starts to breach the horizon, birds are going into high gear and the light is changing drastically for the next 15 minutes then a good hour of barnyard style scrapping amongst the males.

[Brian Sump]

Thanks Brian - will see shat I can do with the cropping.

You should give this experience a shot if you get the chance, I got to go thanks to Covid - International travel left a blind open . total darkness birds making noise all around you while your in the blind. Then the sun starts to breach the horizon, birds are going into high gear and the light is changing drastically for the next 15 minutes then a good hour of barnyard style scrapping amongst the males.

Vaughn, sounds amazing. Love to know details...

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome, Vaughn.

Love the sharpness and the sweet background. You do not see many good flight shots of prairie chickens. Lots of good advice. I ran Topaz DeNoise on Low Light on the whole image, pulled up the Curve to brighten it, and smoothed out the upper background. You can learn more about Topaz DeNoise on my blog for about the past month. And you can learn to better expose to the right with my RawDigger guide. You can find that info on the blog too :)

with love, artie

[Vaughn Larsen]

Thanks much Artie - I am really enjoying this community, learning a bunch and stretching my ideas.

[Bill Dix]

A great flight pose of this chicken little. Artie's RP addressed the minor issues I saw in the OP. Agree with Brian about a slightly looser crop. Would love to have this frame (or anything of this species) in my files. Sounds like a great experience.

[Vaughn Larsen]

A great flight pose of this chicken little. Artie's RP addressed the minor issues I saw in the OP. Agree with Brian about a slightly looser crop. Would love to have this frame (or anything of this species) in my files. Sounds like a great experience.

Thanks for the kind words Bill. I think catching one of the 5 species at least is worth the pursuit.

[Daniel Cadieux]

What a fantastic pose you got here! Good advice, good repost, and I love your description of events while waiting and then working with these subjects. Sounds like a lot of fun!