Tap Dancing at Little Estero

[Randy Stout]

This white morph reddish egret had all the moves.

D300 70-200 f/2.8 at f/3.5 110mm 1/2500 EV +.7 ISO 640

After my experience yesterday with blowing the red channel during post processing on my previously posted pinkie, I really watched for blown highlights at each step of post processing. It was educational to see the highlights change significantly with many different adjustments, including USM, which I wasn't expecting. In thinking about it a bit, I suspect that it was exactly the same effect as boosting overall image contrast, which caused burned highlights. With USM, it is more a localized contrast enhancement.

Comments appreciated as always

Randy

[Joe Senzatimore]

Looks like you hit the nail on the head with this one. Stop action,exposure.comp. and detail all combined into one fine capture. Did I mention that the light is great as well????

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Light, action and details are great. It has a slight yellow cast on my monitor.

[Deborah Harrison]

Beautiful image, sharp but with a sense of movement captured in the water. On my monitor the wings are white and the slight yellow appears only on the body - is this reflection from the sun?

[Grace Scalzo]

A graceful pose captured. The falling droplets and water trail add interest. The wave in the lower left confuses my eye as it doesn't belong to this scene, might you consider cropping to eliminate it?

[Randy Stout]

Grace:

I agree about the wave. The problem was that cropping it didn't give the bird much room to flare into, seemed too tight. Perhaps adding some clean canvas at the bottom would be the best solution, although the birds reflection can become an issue there.

Debbie: It was early morning with some haze in air, so I suspect the yellow is in fact reflected sun light.

Thanks everyone for the input

Randy

[Grace Scalzo]

Randy, I cropped it on my screen by scrolling, and I didn't feel as if the bird was lacking room. See what you think.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I agree with Grace. Cropping from below to just above the larger wave in LLC still gives you a nice composition and keeps the needed room at left intact. The other smaller rings don't bother me at all.

Great wing positions, and the water trail is VERY cool! Nice and sharp. I have some images of the very same individual taken on the very same morning from just beside you and I can tell you that the yellow is present on all of mine too. As you state surely the light conditions are the cause of this. Very well done, congrats!!

[Randy Stout]

Daniel and Grace both mentioned they disliked the wave at the lower left. When I first cropped the image, I cut it out, but thought perhaps it was a bit too tight, so I added that area back in.

Here is my original crop. Appreciate thoughts if it seems better this way?

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Randy? Love the wing position and the foot patter. How did you get the bird to come so close? What caused the wave at the lower left??? (I like the image better without it.) Great to see you so active here and thanks a ton for your membership support.

[John Blumenkamp]

Awesome position and overall capture in my book! I really like the water trail, and also like the cropped version without the LLH wave, etc.

[Grace Scalzo]

I think that is just what it needed Randy. BTW- thanks for your help with some of my images. Appreciated!

[Randy Stout]

I believe that Artie was hinting, politely, that I should have mentioned that this bird was taken on an IPT, so bait was used. He should know, since he was standing just off camera, chucking the fish!

I did not mean to be misleading.

Randy

[Randy Stout]

Good evening:

Several people had mentioned the yellow cast on the original image, which was a side effect of the lighting that AM.

I did go back and do some WB tweaking, which helped some I think. Let me know if you prefer one over the other.


Thanks

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

I believe that Artie was hinting, politely, that I should have mentioned that this bird was taken on an IPT, so bait was used. He should know, since he was standing just off camera, chucking the fish! I did not mean to be misleading. Randy

Hi Randy, We do not toss fish on all IPTs Only when it is legal and effective and when the birds like fish!

I will admit to both catching and tossing the fish.

[Arthur Morris]

ps: As for color, I think that something in between would be best; the repost has a blue casst.

[Randy Stout]

Thanks Artie:

I will do some more tweaking. I seem to be bracketing the issue, a little under, a little over. Eventually I will sneak up on a good result!

Cheers

Randy