Short-Billed Dowitcher Juvi

[John Hawkins]

Snapped yesterday at 9:19 AM at J N "Ding" Darling Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel, FL. I posted one yesterday on Avian Critique Forum and received a lot of good adice from Artie and Alfred. This picture was made with different settings and very little post production work. Just some light saturation and slight sharpening and a little clean up on the beach. Metadata - f/8, 1/500, 0 ev, ISO 100, 500mm, Sony Alpha100 with a Sigma 50-500 lens, fill flash, Better Beamer. Thanks for looking, all C&C's appreciated, John

[Cheryl Flory]

I like the feather detail, low angle, eye contact, and the sand and movement by the feet. On my monitor it look a tiny bit soft. perhaps a bit of contrast or sharpening? I like the bg a lot, even the tilt to the beach.

[Harold Davis]

hi john, looks like you got a great head angle and a nice bg too!! exposure looks spot on!! the eye looks just a tad soft. kinda weird cause the legs and body look sharp!! could just be my eyes. let's wait and see what others say. love the placement of the bird in the frame!! nice job!

[Maxis Gamez]

Hi John,

I have to agree with Cheryl. The image is soft and needs CW rotation. Looks like the main focusing point is behind the bird.

[Lance Peters]

Hi John - like the low angle and also the BG.

Sharpened a bit and CCW rotation .
:)

[Gus Cobos]

Excellent capture John,
I like the low angle. I like what Lance did on the repost...keep them coming...:cool:

[Alfred Forns]

Hi John There is something funny going on with the conversion and we need to figure it out?

This has the same look at the one you posted in birds. The feathers don't have a snap they sort of look dull? The best way I can describe is having a dark area (like underwing of a bird) lighten with shadow/highlight and it gets lighter but a mush looking lighter. This is not as pronounced but do get that feeling.

Not sure if this was also processed in Aperture? Could convert one in PS? The overall image looks flat as presented. Worked it with curves basically and added some canvas to the right then cropped top. Sort of like that proportion with the diagonals. Need some opinions on the changes since is way different than the posted, maybe I went the wrong way?

[Harold Davis]

i like the way you went with it, but there's still something funky going on in front of the feet. it's bright. the area looks better in lance's version.

[John Hawkins]

Thank you all for your help. The area in front of birds feet was the tip of the sand dune I was looking down over. I caught some of the edge and didn't realize it until it was pointed out here. I will post the image untouched. Aperture converts to jpeg but saves the master as RAW. I can go back to the image anytime. I wonder if this is happening in the camera? Could it be the lens? Most likely the operator....but I wish I could figure it out.

[John Hawkins]

Snapped yesterday at 9:19 AM at J N "Ding" Darling Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel, FL. I posted one yesterday on Avian Critique Forum and received a lot of good adice from Artie and Alfred. This picture was made with different settings and very little post production work. Just some light saturation and slight sharpening and a little clean up on the beach. Metadata - f/8, 1/500, 0 ev, ISO 100, 500mm, Sony Alpha100 with a Sigma 50-500 lens, fill flash, Better Beamer. Thanks for looking, all C&C's appreciated, John

Here is the untouched photo.

[Alfred Forns]

John the original is underexposed which accounts for some the strange feather look I was talking about. What did you use to convert? btw Aperture will convert to TIFF. Go to preferences and set things up. Go through all the preferences and make sure you set the color space.


Worked on this one and came up similar to the one I posted.

[Desmond Chan]

Was there something on the front element of the lens (I'm not referring to filters or thing like that) ?

[Arthur Morris]

I do like the ORIG post and Alfred's repost. One with contrast bewteen the two would be perfect. I do not see any feather funkiness of the kind that was present in John's previous post of this species (at least I think that it was John...)