Floating down to the blue

[Ian McLachlan]

This time a female floating down from on high. Bigger than the male like most raptors and to me more impressive and able to carry heavier loads .Her nest is 200 ft or so above the
Bird 's nest about 2 meters wide like her wingspan. Straightened the frame up a bit . Not sure about the foam on either side but as this is the Southern Ocean off Kangaroo Island it's certainly typical.The background cliff face colour varies all the way along 50 k's or more .Rocks, holes ,caves and all he rest..Going bush and out of touch for a few days so hop you like it. Thanks for advice on last post.

D5
500 f4
1/4000th
iso1000
5.6
hh
40% crop about
Comment much appreciated

[gail bisson]

This is a great bird with a very dynamic pose.
The PP looks really off to my eye.
The feathers on the breast are so smoothed out and there is a strong blue cast in the shadowed whites.
BG needs more NR.
I would clone out the white surf if this was mine.
Gail

[Arthur Morris]

Yes to a neat and dynamic flight pose and a great bird. I think that the problems with the image are more the result of photographing a bright white bird in full off-angled sun. The huge contrast in such situations is tough to deal with.

with love and thanks for sharing, artie

[Bill Dix]

That's one tough looking bird, in a great pose. I'm glad you shared it, even if the lighting was not your friend. I agree with Gail's observations.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ian, I agree on the comments above and certainly the PP hasn't done you any real favours, with the heavy blue bleeding into the plumage, the distracting bright strips and sooty black contrast patches in the BKG and if you have used any NR then it looks like the chest plumage has suffered with lack of some detail, but... when you look at certain aspects of the subject I think it might be worth a revisit & repost. Often there are adjustments that folk will always positive, but sometimes going negative is the better route.

This is in no way a definitive image, more just to try and illustrate that it might be worth a revisit, if you want to fire over the RAW, not a tiff or JPEG happy to liook at that Ian.

Agree with Artie, love the dramatic pose.

TFS
Steve

[Ian McLachlan]

Thanks all . .Steve, I will do that when I get back next week .Would certainly be grateful for some advice found this very difficult.
Ian

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ian, no worries, but if you can do it sooner rather than later that would be great as after a week tomorrow I'll be taking at least three weeks out to do some scouting out and fingers crossed, some photography at last. Will drop you a PM.

Steve

[John Mack]

The pose is great.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Ian, thanks for the file and this is just my take.

Firstly the image is too small in frame, the capture would have benefitted from adding a TC, retaining IQ and cropping is kept to a minimal. The file is sharp with detail, you can see the pupil in the eye and the beak/talons are razor sharp, but as noted, the sunny condition were not in your favour for the whites. Yes there is detail, and perhaps with less of a crop you could have pulled a tad more detail, however... although in the shadow areas you do have good detail. The light has also added more contrast for the backdrop, creating clumps of dark areas, plus there might have been a cove to the very LHS , something to kept away from as you just see black.

Colour, well that to a degree is perceptual for me not being there, but getting a base WB where the RGB values are all equal will give you a good start so you don't have any colour bias in one direction, ie Blue or Magenta cast. IMHO there is no one better raw converter than another, they all have Pros & Cons, it ultimately comes down to what works for you and does it deliver, but PS is a key to the final part of the jigsaw, as there is so much you can do that you cannot within raw converters. The file even at ISO 1000 does show some noise, or grain in the shadow/dark areas and I think Joe P has highlighted this with some of his images, as I think both of you shoot with the same body? I have no problem with a little noise, it part it can give a slight 'authenticity' to an image, rather than super smooth images which can create an almost 'cutout' look/appearance, but a little NR here is fine, but you must always apply NR to a RAW and never, ever, to a baked 16bit Tiff. Why do you think it's built into Raw Converters at the end before Exporting to PS. In addition, when exporting from your Raw converter, export as a 16 bit Tiff, work always on a 16 bit, keep your Master file with all it's layers in tact, never ever flat, only do this when cropping for output and then Save As, this is the only time you will have a JPEG. If you flatten your Master file and Save, you can never go back to make any subtle changes from advice given to your OP and create a repost, you would have to start from scratch!!! Again, never work on a JPEG for PP.

To the file:

1. Imported and achieved a neutral WB so the file had zero cast
2. Colour correction to a minimum, but in the OP I feel you flooded the blue too much, so it bleed into the whites
3. Addressed some Contrast
4. Applied minimal NR (including Colour noise) and applied some 'input sharpening'
5. Export to PS, applied some layer masks to help on the whites, Colour balance to tweak & enrich the BKG, removed some of the distracting white areas
6. Saved, cropped, exported for Web

Hope this helps Ian, any questions just ask, will try to answer.

Cheers
Steve

[Ian McLachlan]

Steve
Many thanks for the detailed explanation of what you did and why.I know I was at least a stop too high so the whites were hot, and had the TC on for a while but took it off when earlier the birds came in too close and more than filled the frame. Will go back to school on the PP with your v. helpful guidance.Thamks again
Ian

[Steve Kaluski]

Will go back to school on the PP with your v. helpful guidance.Thamks again

LOL Ian, just keep your PP simple, have a 'vision' in what needs to be done and avoid adding in the 'kitchen sink' - less is more in terms of PP.