Corkscrew Spoonbill

[Mark Adkins]

300mm 1.4TC 1/250 f5.6 ISO200

Interested in what you would recommend for the background. Very high contrast with bright bird and dark background (mud). I like the colors, detail, eye contact, but the high contrast was challenging. The back of the spoonbill looks a bit blown on my monitor, but the histogram showed no clipping.

Thanks

Mark

[Sid Garige]

Mark,

Nice head shot and good details. Shooting angle looks kind of steep and may be a lower angle would have helped.

Coming to white birds on dark background, using a fill flash will light up the bird and provides a good dark background.

[Jim Poor]

Hi Mark. I am a fan of dark backgrounds so I would like to have seen this one blocked out completely.

A good way to boost contrast in an image like this is to do it in LAB mode. First, in RGB, I used curves to block out the BG almost completely (there were some bright spots that remained) and then burned out the spots that were still visible. Then I used a layer mask to remove the darkening from parts of the bird that got blocked out too.

Then I converted to LAB color space and moved the end points of the A & B channels in about 25 % from each end.

This move boosted the contrast a bit and brought back some details. This is really noticeable if you look at the "grain" in the bill.

Even if you're not a fan of the dark BG, the LAB curves can do wonders for the bird.

[Jim Poor]

oops. looks like I missed a spot or two just below the bill on when bringing back the breast, but I think you get the idea. Whether or not you like it of course, is a whole new story :D

P.S. with a bit of fill flash, the BG could be made to come out like this in camera.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I wouldn't change the original BG except for the three horizontal bright spots but the image seems to have a blue cast.

[Mark Adkins]

Thanks for the advice. I like your changes.

Mark