Hi Linda,
You have a nice take off capture, I like the forward flapping wing position and and the trail of water left behind...a few points to consider...you were shooting in very harsh light; and the sun was hitting your bird at a side angle. This is the reason why the left side of the bird has blown out whites; and you have the shadows on the right side...The inside of the bill is over cooked with no details...on the composition side, I would suggest on taking off about 1/4 from the top, and adding canvas to the right; your subject is too centered... I don't know how your histogram looks; I don't have access to my laptop; but I would venture to say that the white are 255+...It's a shame, because you do have a good capture...looking forward to your next one...
Hi Linda - Gus has the tech's covered - you couold try a mulitpy layer in P.S. to reduce the white hot spots - but I am guessing some of them might be too far gone.
Hi Linda So happy you got a toilet bowl shot !!! Neat Sure was fun :)
Not much we could do about the sun angle standing at a dock and at the mercy of the white pelicans !!! Exposure wise it is a bit over, need to remember to guard against the whites, imagine you had the brown pelican setting !!! Agree with Gus on the crop, best to take some from top and bottom and would be nice to have a little extra up front !!!
I tried doing both a multiply layer and an exposure adjustment and they both are out of range of fixing the whites. Next time you have harsh lighting, shoot the image in RAW format...you might have been able to save most of it!
If shot as RAW (and 16bit of course) there is a chance to ressurect the image, and in my experience most should be done in Adobe Raw using Curves. If you open the image in PS and try to use curves, levels or shadow/highlights, for example, halos become a problem. In any case playing around with the curve parameters in RAW (highlights/lights/darks/shadows) might help alot. As far as the shooting image, a primarily white bird, a -1 or even more EV adjustment is usually called for, though I like shooting at a higher shutter speed than the camera indicates. In either case the background might turn out too dark, in which case it could lighened up using any number of methods, including quick masking and maybe a little noise reduction (lightening it up may very well induce noise). My reasoning is that dealing with exposure problems is usually easier with the background than the subject. Once the image has been dealt with in ARC playing around with multiplying layers, levels, or curves in PS might help.
As far as composition goes, it has already been mentioned that the subject is too centered. This is a common result of the camera's focusing aid being in the center, however the center is a very uninteresting position and a compostional framework works better. The "rule of thirds" is the old standby, and if I were to crop this image I'd place the bird in the left third, giving it space to "fly into" and do considerable top/ bottom cropping. Of course compostion is best done on the fly through the viewfinder, and minor adjustments done by cropping, yet it is certainly possible to use existing parts of the image to "clone" areas of background to create compostional balance. Hope this helps~Bill
Toilet Bowl
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