Amoor Falcon

[Adithya UN]

This one is from my archives. These gorgeous birds on their way to Siberia visit India in winter. Made this image on a trek. They were hovering above our head, and sitting on sticks like the one above. After building some trust with the bird, it allowed me to go very close and i made images from all angles. The Honeymoon lasted for more than an hour. I was a great experience..

EXIF: 1/320s at F8 ISO 400
Canon 40D with Canon 100-400 L IS

Comments and critics are welcome...
Thanks for watching..

-ADi

[Doug Brown]

Cool encounter Adithya! I like the perch and pose. I would back off on the image contrast a bit. And I find the black frame a little overpowering; perhaps slightly thinner. Thanks for sharing an interesting story.

[Aidan Briggs]

Ditto Doug. I would get rid of the black frame completely

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the eye contact, details and pose. The blue has a slight color cast and I agree that the frame is a bit overpowering.

[Arthur Morris]

First off, welcome. As for the image, wow! It looks like a black American Kestrel. Love the image design and the head angle. I would love to see a repost without the black frame and with the contrast and saturation lowered a bit.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I love it, nice species, pose, light, exposure and detail. IMO it could use some CCW rotation and a tad more room at the bottom would be good. Congratulatinos and welcome!

[Adithya UN]

Hi Artie,


Here is the image without border,very less saturation and color corrected.
How ever i have tried to recover some details in the high light regions using shadow highlights in CS3. But i do see that doing this will increase the saturation of the frame completely. Can you please comment on that??

Thanks again
-ADi

[Arthur Morris]

Hi ADi, There are a few clipped hightlight pixels. What are you converting with???

Still over-SATed and way too dark. For the repost I lightened the mid and the darker tones with Curves and decreased the SAT 8 points. Added canvas below and right and took a bit off the top for a more balanced COMP.

Lastly, I noticed a faint glow around the bird likely from something that you did after making a selection. (See the Refine Edge tutorial in ER and if you are converting in ACR, see the new one on ACR conversions.

This is a superb image. It will be worth starting over and getting it right.

BTW, to promote sales of my Digital Basics File, I often say the following: "Many good photographers make their images look worse in Photoshop rather than better....

[Arthur Morris]

ps: Is your monitor calibrated? Do you check the calibration strip at the bottom of this page???

[Adithya UN]

Hi Artie,

please find my answers below:

Hi ADi, There are a few clipped hightlight pixels. What are you converting with???

Here is my conversion process:
1. Open the image in DPP( Canon imaging software to process raw files)
2. Do minor Adjustments like exposure correction if any, contrast,saturation and sharpness.
3. Convert and save the file as tiff.
4. Open this tiff in CS3 and process it.

Still over-SATed and way too dark. For the repost I lightened the mid and the darker tones with Curves and decreased the SAT 8 points. Added canvas below and right and took a bit off the top for a more balanced COMP.

Yes your version looks better than what i had done, with nice details on the talons.

Lastly, I noticed a faint glow around the bird likely from something that you did after making a selection. (See the Refine Edge tutorial in ER and if you are converting in ACR, see the new one on ACR conversions.

This is a superb image. It will be worth starting over and getting it right.

Sure will do that

BTW, to promote sales of my Digital Basics File, I often say the following: "Many good photographers make their images look worse in Photoshop rather than better....

Could you please point me to some tutorials in your website pertaining to what ever we discussed above, so that i can improve...

ps: Is your monitor calibrated? Do you check the calibration strip at the bottom of this page???

nope. My monitor is not calibrated. Will check that.




Thanks again for your valuable inputs,
Adithya U N

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Adithya,

re:

Here is my conversion process:
1. Open the image in DPP( Canon imaging software to process raw files)
2. Do minor Adjustments like exposure correction if any, contrast,saturation and sharpness.

The problem of hot whites comes from errors you are making in Step 2 here.... I used DPP at one time but do not have it on this computer.... When you first open the image in CS3, open a Levels Adjustment Layer, hold down the ALT key, click on the highlight slider, and make sure that there are no hot pixels. If there are, you have to go back and reconvert darker. I would advise learning to do your conversions in ACR. There is a great new tutorial in Educational Resources. The big advantage there is that you can use the Recovery slider to get back the highlights without darkening the whole image....

Yes your version looks better than what i had done, with nice details on the talons.

Thank you sir.

Could you please point me to some tutorials in your website pertaining to what ever we discussed above, so that i can improve...

It is all in our Digital Basics PDF here: https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=252 It will cost you $20 but is more than worth it. It is sent by e-mail, it contains all of the tips that I give here on BPN, and the new stuff will be in the next free update. :)

Nope. My monitor is not calibrated. Will check that.

That is a very important step or else you are working in the dark....

Thanks again for your valuable inputs.

You are most welcome.