Mr. Ugly Contest

[Amy DeStefanis]

Here's my chance - I think I have an uglier bird than John Chardine's Crow (Rook).

I didn't post this in the past because I realize that I am shooting up at the bird (but then, isn't that the classic vulture pose - gawking down from above?), and the sky behind was quite blown out. However, I tried Art's Linear Burn technique on the sky, and it gave it a more saturated blue - as if it were polarized.

ISO 800
70-300 @ 185mm
1/160 sec @ f/13
built-in Fill flash

Amy D.

[Linda Robbins]

Not sure if this bird beats out John Chardine's crow, but then I might be prejudiced.,.,.,.I really like black vultures. The linear burn left darker blue areas along the edges of the bird, especially on the fine feathers on the top of the head. Also could use some selective sharpening on the face and neck,

[Amy DeStefanis]

Hi Linda,

I can't see the line you are referring to on my monitor - but if I increase the opacity in PS, it is apparent. I will work on that and repost. Thank you for letting me know.

Amy

[Amy DeStefanis]

Here is a repost - I expanded the sky before applying the linear burn, and did the selective sharpening as Linda suggested. Apparently, I am not seeing the same results (I'm on a Mac using the Safari browser) that everyone might be seeing, so please let me know if this is an improvement....

Thanks!
Amy

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Amy, The black's look a bit better but the bluish fringing is still present. Your chore is a highly difficult one... In addition, I would suspect that despite the sky being blown that the blacks, especially about the head, were well underexposed as they look as if they had been lightened quite a bit.

Sometimes we make an image, learn from it, and look for more Black Vultures!

[Vincent Grafhorst]

Defenitely a candidate for winning this contest Amy;)

[Amy DeStefanis]

Thanks for the comments, Art. Well, I tried, anyway....

Here is a version with NO adjustments at all, except for cropping to the square. I simply exported the .jpg from the original RAW.

The blacks were not under exposed - in fact, in the original post, I had to adjust the blacks to get the histogram down to the left edge.... I'm sure it's some other result of my post processing....

But I will be on the lookout for more vultures - I know exactly where to go. But the branch he was sitting on, which I had to kayak under, has unfortunately been cut down.... :(

Amy D.

[Robert O'Toole]

Well it is ugly in an attractive way.
This situation of a black subject with back lighting is a tough one. You did a decent job. I normally only photograph these birds in cloudy low contrast conditions, I wont even try in any other light.
You mentioned that you had to adjust the blacks to get the histo to the left edge. Remember bringing the histogram to the left edge really increases the contrast and can make dark grays black losing dynamic range.

Robert

[Amy DeStefanis]

Thanks for your feedback, Robert. That would explain a lot. I used the "Blacks" slider in Lightroom until the blacks were to the left, but not clipping. I didn't have an issue with the whites clipping. My categorization of the sky being "blown out" was really in reference to it being distractingly bright compared to the subject - not being clipped.

Thanks for all of the comments everyone.

Amy

[Arthur Morris]

Good idea to post the ORIG. The big problem here was a huge blue cast. I corrected the color balance and did a bunch of color fine tuning and some eye work...

Whaddy think? (It was a tough one...)

[Amy DeStefanis]

Hi Art. Thanks so much. Wow - what did you do with the eye? It has so much detail. On my monitor, the color looks almost completely desaturated.

My first instinct not to post this was probably the correct one, but the theme for the day seemed to be "ugly" - and this has turned out to be that for more reasons than I originally thought!

:)

Thanks for your time on the repost!

Amy

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Amy, YAW. Just the usual eye doctor stuff. Darken the pupil and lighten the iris (but only an eentsy weeny bit as they have pretty dark eyes. I used QMs and de-SAT/Darker for that. The birds are really pretty black. Your image had a huge blue/cyan cast so after I did a basic color balance I still did some more de-SATin and some selective color work...