Great northern diver - advice requested

[michael]

Canon 1d mk2, Canon 500mm f4.0

ISO 400, f6.3, 1/1000

manual, incident light metering.

I like this image because of the "bow wave" over the birds chest, but having tried a number of different things I don't seem to be able to get the picture to "pop".

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you .

Michael

[Connie Mier]

Hi michael, yes, the wave caught my eye as well. Not sure how you could make this pop more, I think you did a good job with the exposure. If you had just a bit of a head turn toward you it would have overcome any lighting limitation IMO.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the soft light and agree, the wave adds to it. I also wish for a bit more head turn towards you and would tone down the highlights some more.

[David Fletcher]

Hi Michael. Remember I muttered on about being adaptable. This is one striking close up. Done well. What I did is :

1. > new layer via copy. selection via magic wand on bg and then inversed and contracted by 1px
2. > set Normal on blending mode to Luminosity.
3. Didn't bother with three rounds of usm and went straight to 47%, 20 & 4! (the darks needed some punch).
4. Selective color, and added +2 in whites, neutrals and blacks.
5. Whilst in the copy layer, did smart sharpen and reduced opacity to 50%
6. flatten

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Looks good Michael and David's post made it pop. Now for that perfect HA. That's all it craves. :)