Head throw strobe blur

[Phil Colla]

This was shot 45 min before the sun reached the birds. Since strobe was the primary light source for the bird, it froze the eye, head and body details quiet well but of course the bill is blurred by the slo-mo shutter. Shot from the lower part of the cliffs looking up, in December before peak plumage so the red and olive in the throat are not maxed out yet. I think I should clone out the lower left but not sure how to do it and have a natural looking edge to the dirt pedestal.



1DsII / 300mm on monopod / full frame / ISO 200 / f/8 @ 1/80. Metered so the sky was about +1 or so.

[Steve Bein]

Phil,
I tried many times to get this shot. YOu nailed it. If the blur of the beak bothers you, cutting and pasting in a sharp one would work. You really do fine images. This is what I had dreamed of. Some dream and others realize the dreams. As far as cloning out the ll, I think it looks like another bird. I would clone out some and leave the dirt part.
Best,
steve

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Nice pose and composition!

[Arthur Morris]

The blurred eye bothers me more than the blurred bill... The main question here is why not ISO 800??? Getting rid of either the bird (with the patch tool) or the whole rock in the LLC (by selecting and protecting--shift control I--the perch rock and using the clone tool) are both easy, with the latter taking a bit more time. Cutting and pasting a sharp bill as suggested by Dr. Bein would not work as you could never find anything like the lower mandible.... Grabbing an eye from another frame would work.

Nice framing and good job of capturing the peack of the action; a higher ISO and you would have been famous.

later and love,

artie

ps: I tried to get rid of the rock and repost it. Rock removal went well but then I started wrecking your border so I quit...

[Phil Colla]

Thanks, those are helpful comments. At the time I was trying for deliberately blurred shots flight shots, the reason why I had such a slow s/s. I did not expect to get a head toss but there it was. You suggestion about grabbing another eye is a good one, I will look for one in the adjacent frames...

[Mike Wilson]

Now that's a different take on a common image. Very different and worth trying again if they cooperate for you. Good luck and we'll try again this week on the Gulls. I'll let you know.