I took this one recently in Skopje, Macedonia. The background is the waters of Vardar River.
I cropped and sharpened the image. There were no other modifications. Here's the shooting data:
Nikon D80 2009/01/04 07:31:23.4
Compressed RAW (12-bit) Image Size: Large (3872 x 2592)
Lens: Sigma 175-500mm F/4.5-6.3 D
Focal Length: 440mm
Exposure Mode: Programmed Auto
Metering Mode: Spot
1/400 sec - F/6.3
Exposure Comp.: -0.7 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 400
Optimize Image: Normal
White Balance: Color Temp. (5600 K)
I would zoom and crop more if I could, but I'm afraid that's the best I could do.
On the other hand I wanted to keep as much as possible of the water background.
I really like the soft water texture.
Thanks for your comments.
Hi Dukovski,
Welcome to the BPN family,
I like your capture, you have nice details and colors on your Robin...I like the blue hues in the background...a few points to consider...the bird is too centered in frame, it needs to be off set and in this case, placed more to the right, so that he has space to look into; and conforms to the rule of thirds. I modified your base composition by cropping from the right, from the top to eliminate some of the negative space and 1/4 from the bottom...this places all of the attention on your bird...also adjusted the mid-tones in the background and lightened them up a bit..selective sharpened the area around the eye, and ran a pass of noise reduction in the background...see if this presents best to you...:)looking forward to more of your captures...:cool:
Agree on keeping lots of the water bg Ilija, does have a beautiful tone. With the crop posted by Gus you still keep the feel of the water but place the bird in a better place, you normally want to keep the bird out of the center particularly a small in frame.
Metering wise would suggest not to use the spot metering, not sure you could place it within an intended area? Might go to the matrix metering. You had some good light and with the given comp I think the histogram is underexposed? Did you get data on the right box?
For most normal processing you will need to do some level/curves along with the normal sharpening at the end. I like the changes made in the re post !!! Looking forward to many more !!!
Hi Ilija, I like your photo and think that Gus's repost brings out the colours and sharp details, particularly the eye even more. The water is still retained in the smaller crop so it still has that nice soft look. Looking forward to your next post.
Dave
Thank you for the comments.
It is quite useful to me to see what can be done with PS.
Alfred, I'm not sure what do you mean by level/curves processing? :o
I'm new to software post-processing.
Robin at Vardar river
