Pelican at sunset

[Leroy Laverman]

I took this one a while ago and redid the post processing. I cloned out a bit of another bird in the background and selectively blurred the background quite a lot. At f/9 you can imagine it wasn't that nice but I wanted to have a greater DOF for this large bird.

Technical Info
Nikon D80
ISO 400 f/9 1/160 sec
Nikon 80-200 AFD @200mm + 1.4 TC

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Very nice portrait. I like the light and eye contact and would tone down the highlights on the top of the head and bring out some more details in the shadows by using curves or S/H.

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Fantastic warm/soft light and great eye contact!

[Leroy Laverman]

Thanks for the suggestions Axel. That's one thing I struggled with on this one. If I brought out too much of the shadows it looked flat so I wasn't sure how far to go. I have the same issue with other black/white birds like black-necked stilts.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Thanks for the suggestions Axel. That's one thing I struggled with on this one. If I brought out too much of the shadows it looked flat so I wasn't sure how far to go. I have the same issue with other black/white birds like black-necked stilts.

You could try to adjust curves in your RAW converter, in ACR 4.5 it works very well with images like this.