Roseate Spoonbill

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

Took this outside of Lafayette Louisiana earlier this week. The birds were nesting and there were many to pick from. I find Roseates extremely hard to expose properly. It seems if you get the whites right the pinks are under and the reverse. How do you feel I did on this one? Shooting information:
Nikon D300
2009:05:12 172:06
850mm
850mm (in 35mm film)
1/1250 sec, f/8
Mode: Manual
Metering: Spot
ISO: 200
AF mode: AF-C
White balance: AUTO
Flash: Off
File size: 12.3MB
Image size: 3036 x 2010
Color space: AdobeRGB
Saturation: Normal
Sharpness: Normal
Contrast: Normal

[David Thomasson]

I like the pose and the perch. The spiky perch nicely mirrors the spiky feet. My suggested edits are: 1) add a little on the right, 2) take a little off the top and left, and 3) adjust levels for brightness and color balance.

[Randy Stout]

Wheeler:

I would echo David's comments. The repost is better, but the image still seems to have a grey color cast in the pinks. David is a real PS whiz, so perhaps that is all the image has to give, but the pinks don't look quite right compared to the ones I saw in Florida.

The feet are great!

Randy

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

Randy, I think that the pinks are the way this bird was. It is a second year bird and I understand that they are quite grey in this phase of their life. So I really don't think there is much that can be done. The more matyre birds were really very red this time of year, as some of my images would show. Thanks for your thoughts and I hope my explanation is correct.

Mac

[Randy Stout]

Wheeler & David:

I took the liberty of tweaking the chroma adjustment for the pinks in NX2. This is to match my memory of the spoonies I saw while in Florida. I started with David's nice repost, and tried to eliminate what I saw as a grey color cast in the pinks.

See what you think.

Randy

[Wheeler McDougal Jr.]

Randy- I have to admit I think it might look better. Thanks for the effort. I will try it with the RAW version and repost it.
Mac

[Stu Bowie]

I like the pose of the spoonie, with a lovely head turn. Not knowing the species, I cant comment on the colours, but all I would change here is to take a bit off the bottom.

[David Thomasson]

Wheeler & David:

I took the liberty of tweaking the chroma adjustment for the pinks in NX2. This is to match my memory of the spoonies I saw while in Florida. I started with David's nice repost, and tried to eliminate what I saw as a grey color cast in the pinks.

See what you think.

Randy

Randy ... yes, that looks good to me. Of course I don't know this bird and can only guess at its coloration. Here's my repost with the reds boosted a bit using a selective color adjustment layer.