Gerald and I have been posting different species of avocets (his Pied in Belgium, mine American in California). I think both are beautiful creatures. This morning I found that the plumage of the two still-young juveniles I've been photographing regularly now looks distinctly adult for the first time. The morning light was behind me, but coming slightly from right to left. Cropped 50% and NR and sharpened and tweaked. Critiques, please.
Hi Wendell This is one interesting image. The things I appreciate in the image are the low angle, sharpness, smooth bg, interesting action. Well done I'd say.
Cheers
Gail
That is a real cute little Avocet - and great that you have been able to watch him growing up! I like the pose and the reflection is great! I love that raised foot - even though it looks particularly gooey! I am sure it would be well worth your while to clean up some of the little bits of crud in the water with some careful patch work!
Well done!
Gerald
PS. In fact, I have been sneaking across the border into the Netherlands to photograph my Avocets! Better not tell the Dutch guys though! :D:D
Hi Wendell - love the low shooting angle - Good pose and HA and eye contact - lots to like here.
The whites on the breast area are just a tad hot - your bird looks like he could use a little more sharpening and some NR on the background.
Improving - keep them coming :)
What a scruffy teenager! I am liking the reflections and ripples following the little bird. Like Gerald said, little bits of crud in the water look like dust bunnies to me.
Wendell I just noticed that there appears to be quite a few dust spots in the image. These are probably from dust on the sensor. Best to clean those off and that is a kind of delicate operation that you'll need to research and study up on.
Gail
wendell, this is one of my favorites of yours!!! love the composition with the reflection. looks perfect in the frame. i'd tone the whites and clean up the bg. would make this a real winner!!
Even early the light was getting strong, whites are a little over, good low angle and might even have zoomed back a little. Showing more of the trailing wake might have been good and less cropping would be needed. Don' t feel compelled to have 80% bird in frame all the time !!! Excellent image !!!
Thanks to all. Really appreciate your comments! Looks like I will have to research the sensor problem. Didn't know about that. And, Gail, a cursory check with Google just now makes me a bit nervous at the prospect of cleaning it myself for the first time. However, I'll pursue the fix . . .
I took another look at your image and, I hope you don't mind, thought I would play with it a little, just to see what more could be gotten out of it.
I straightened the image with 3 degrees CCW, so the tip of the beak was vertical with the reflection. This meant I had to add some more background, just with cloning. Then I cleaned up the background with the spot healing brush.
I selected the background using a Color Range Selection, so I could lighten and brighten the background a little, plus a little Noise Ninja. I'd saved the selection so was able to use that to make an inverted mask of the bird and so I tweaked that doing a color selection and adding a little black (25%) to the whites and a single round of Smart Sharpening.
I think you will be able to get a better result on the original file. It is a good learning exercise and I think you have a super image to work on.
Growing up
