Rough Landing
Nikon D300
Nikkor 80-400 mm VR @ 200 mm
f/7.1 @ 1/1600
ISO 800, EC + 0.33
As this brown pelican prepared to land at the J.N. "Ding" Darling NWR, a startled fish exploded the water beneath the bird. Although strong sunlight created shadow problems that I've attempted to minimize in PS CS3 using camera raw and S/H adjustments, I think the action in this image is worth sharing with you.
All comments are welcome!
Hi Norm,
I like the landing position with the extended wings...you have good details...the base image looks a tad under exposed...I would open up the mid-tones and the blacks on the bird to bring out the details, also selective sharpen the eye area...:cool:
Hi Norm Agree with Gus and can make a couple more suggestions
Pelicans need a good sun angle for best results, feathers need light. Here the light was more from the left making the front and under wings in shadows. Would also like seeing the wings flaring more which is a mixture of frame rate and luck.
Framing wise need more space below and less up top, would like seeing the stirred water with room ... and btw great timing !!!
Hi Norm. What a strange looking situation. Hard to tell whether the pelican is coming or going. It does feel a little tight on the bottom. Good capture.
Dave
Thanks Gus and Al:
As usual, your comments have been very helpful, and I'll work on the mid-tones, blacks and eye sharpening.
I agree with Al's assessment of the shadow problem posed by the sun angle and the less than optimal wing flare, but I of course had no control over those aspects of the situation. As for possible re-cropping, the image was unfortunately fairly tightly framed and I could only add a bit more space to the left and right of the bird, which I don't think would be particularly desirable.
When I saw the pelican come in I thought that backing off on the zoom to 200 mm would have permitted a complete capture, but perhaps I was wrong.
Anyway, thanks again for your comments!
Originally Posted by Norm Dulak
Nice, and very unusual, capture. I notice some halos -- light ones along dark edges, and a dark one around the white head. Sometimes these are caused by the Clarity slider in ACR. They can also be caused by USM set to enhance local contrast (low amount, large radius). More likely they're from the S/H filter, which is kind of tricky. You can usually tame halos there by adjusting the radius slider. The default radius is likely to be too small for most images.
unique situation indeed! looks like the pelican is backing out of the water!! david brings up some interesting points with the halos. the bird does look ultra sharp so i think some of it comes from USM. if so, you could selectively sharpen only the bird and that would help with those halos.
thanks for sharing!!
David & Harold:
Thanks for the comments concerning halos. There is much to learn and explore in PS, and your insights are very helpful.
For sharpening, I generally use smart sharpen, but there are intricacies to be learned with that tool as well. Is there a reason to believe that USM is still the preferred method for sharpening?
Norm Dulak
There's much to be said for either method. I generally use USM, but almost always protected by an edge mask as described in this article by Bruce Fraser (look under the subhead "Capture Sharpening").
awesome article, david. thanks for the link.
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