Ivory Gull In MA

[john crookes]

I was lucky enough to see and photograph this rare visator from the far north in Plymouth this past Thursday.
There was also one in Gloucester but that one has not been seen in a couple of days

Nikon D3
600mm F4
ISO 200
1/2000th
F 8
Gitzo Tripod
Wimberley Head

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I was wondering if someone would post an image of this rare guest. I like the incoming pose and would run NR on the BG and desaturate the BG a few points. Did you also get some images with more eye contact?

[john crookes]

yes i got plenty of them in different poses the bird is quite non-shy like most northern birds

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Good for you. I'm not sure I will be able to go on a road trip to Plymouth anytime soon.

[john crookes]

there have been people from as far away as Texas this weekend as there may not be another Ivory Gull down here in our lifetime the last time a adult was seen in MA was the 1880's the last Ivory's seen 30 years ago were all juvenilles

[Arthur Morris]

Great bird. I like the pose. There is a huge blue cast in the rather funky sky. I saved the image and tried to work on the color balance but the results were way funky and whatever I did caused a huge halo around the bird. I would love to see a JPEG representative of the converted RAW.

[john crookes]

here is a straight jpeg with nothing done except save as srgb

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks John. It was much easier to work with this one. (Not sure what you did to the ORIG.) In any case, I worked a bit on the color balance using various techniques. I think that the sky color is much better but not quite what I had in mind. The sky in the ORIG was way funky....

Are you using RAW capture?

[john crookes]

Yes I am and on my monitor the sky looks normal and I did convert to srgb but it also looked funky to me on post I will do some investigation on my comp to see if settings have gotten messed up

John

[john crookes]

I went back and redid this image only this time i got rid of any color cast with a threshold adjustment and curves

any better any worse

[Arthur Morris]

Looks better than the ORIG post and much brighter than my version.