Snowy Egret
I'm posting this at the request of my friend Mike. He's able to read posts here but has trouble uploading so he asked for my help. Now he'd like some help from the BPN family.
He's interested in what you all think of this shot and how you would crop it if you were going to. Also any nits you may have.
Thanks for your help.
Canon 30D
EF 300 2.8 IS
1.4 TC II
ISO 200
f/5
420mm
1/1250th sec.
pattern metering
white balance manual-Not sure what it was set to
And a 100% crop
Hi Chuck,
Welcome to BPN...Which Mike are you referring to as your friend, we have several Mikes here. Anyway; The composition as presented, has several issues that need to be addressed. The bird was photographed at a very steep or high angle. The bird is too small in frame. The black blotch in the lower left hand corner of the frame is not too appealing. I don't know what happened, could be a post processing glitch... The bird was cut off at the tail end and has no feet. also see noise in the background with additional dust spots in the blue background. and the head angle and eye contact is a bit off. the eye is also not sharp. and your whites are on the hot side. I made a few modifications to the composition to illustrate my points. I cropped all the way around to bring the bird to one of the intercepting 1/3 quadrant. I reconstructed the tail end as best as possible, toned down the whites selective sharpened the eye and the feathers. reduced the noise in the background and gave it a slight blur touch. also cloned out the dust spots in the blue background...I hope this presents well with you and Mike and helps you in the preparation of Mike's next capture.
All the best...hope to seeing more...:cool:
Thanks for your help Gus.
Actually, he hasn't registered yet so that'll cause some problems uploading photos.
chuck, it needs a serious color balance or correction also! it has a serious blue cast that can easily be corrected!!
thanks Harold. Would that have been caused by the white balance setting? This was shot in large jpeg and not raw so how would I go about getting rid of the bluish cast.
Thanks again for your help
Chuck
dont take this for granted but i know of two ways i think will work. first would be to set the black and white control points. the second would be to lower the blue channel.
reposted with the black and white color points and also desaturation. still lots of blues there.
AL!! help!!!
Hi Chuck Not sure how the image got to look like it did? Best to shoot raw so you can correct before processing.
For color balancing look for a tone that is neutral and check with the eye dropper, the reading should be all the same number (close) if not add/remove colors to make it even. Corrected the color and decreased saturation.
Thought I would have a go at this. Starting with the original image, I pulled mass quantities of cyan out of the color balance. By taking out the offending colors, I think I came up with a more pleasing tonal balance and closer to true white for the plumage.
Added some selective sharpening to the eye and a taste of it overall.
lots of helpful info there - think Als is closer to real life - but sure like the blues in Kerry's Repost.
keep em coming
Thanks to you all for your ideas and suggestions. I'm not very adept with photoshop and all of the suggestions really help alot.
Here is a version I made earlier and now I'll try some of your ideas.
The bg blue is the most interesting color I don't think it appears in nature ... at least in this planet :)
Ha, you're right about that! I was trying to preserve the original bg color and change the color of the bird... However, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature! =:o)
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