Beautiful trumpeter swans , ugly water

[Ben Egbert]

This was taken at Turnbull NWR in Eastern WA. They are a resident family of Trumpeter Swans. The morning was extremely overcast, and this shot is due east shortly after sunrise so into the sun had the sun been visible. No access from the east side of the pond. I also have the two young they raised this year in a similar pose.

This is not a large crop, and was taken vertical. I had to clone out two ducks, and worked on the water a bit, but as you can see, it has too much random detail for easy cloning. The water has lots of junk in it, and in addition, was full of noise. As you can see, I have the entire reflection but the water at the bottom is so bad I am thinking of cropping the lower part out.

I did a quick mask on the birds and worked the water with NR, cloning and smoothing. I kept the image dark especially the water.

Short of getting the birds to move to a cleaner pond, what could I do here.
Also, I realize the back bird is not in critical focus. Would it be better if it were dead sharp or even more OOF?

Canon 50D, 500f4+1.4x at f8, ISO400 1/200 sec. Shot from a tripod and Wimberly Sidekick.

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Good job with cloning stuff off the water, very clean work. I would crop more off the bottom since the reflection of the birds on the water is not that clear. From the image size the back bird look sharp enough for me, not sure how it looks if the image is larger. I'm not sure what to suggest with unclean water situation, maybe go for a lower angle, I'm just guessing here. You have a great feather details and I think you can bring out more details on the white around the shoulder, below is my quick attempt using curve and mask. Wish that there is a way to bring the eye out from the black beak of the front bird, maybe a catch light would help.

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks for your rework, I need to learn more about using curves in this manner. On the clone, I actually used cropped an area and used free transform to hide the OOF duck in the upper left. Did not work as wlel on the lower right duck. Area looks like flare.

I agree on the crop. 100% view shows less sharpness on the back bird, web size hides lots of problems.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Not bad, I use QM too if possible to hide obstacles. One thing to do is enlarge the picture to 200/300% and look it over to ensure clone and patch work is clean. The picture is nice and it is what it is. Regarding light, are you saying it was shot into the light source? Possible flat light produced low detail in the swan bodies and the slow shutter speed hurt too.

On balance, great moment in nature picture and you can spend time enhancing the image. The swans are beautiful, just not sure how much detail there is to recover, given the light and 1/200 shutter over 700MM of focal length?

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Ben,
This is a beautiful capture, agree with Mr. Cashdollar on the techs. The image is a tad under exposed, might want to adjust the mid-tones, set the black point, and open up the area around the eyes, and selective sharpen them...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Gail Spitler]

This is a lovely composition, well worth working on the image to get it to be everything that it can be.
Cheers
Gail

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Ben,
This is a beautiful capture, agree with Mr. Cashdollar on the techs. The image is a tad under exposed, might want to adjust the mid-tones, set the black point, and open up the area around the eyes, and selective sharpen them...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

You are right Gus, this was an early shot as I was getting set up and had not yet tuned in exposure. I have +.6 exp at conversion. More was possible, but I wanted to keep the water dark.

I need to digest your suggestions. I do set black and white point but seldom mess with mid tones as it tends to get all muddy when I do. An art I have yet to master. I am currently using FM Velvia and it has an action to lighten mid tones that does better than I have been able to do.

Still reading the Art of bird Photagraphy II.

[Ben Egbert]

This is a lovely composition, well worth working on the image to get it to be everything that it can be.
Cheers
Gail

Thanks Gail, I will post the two young trumpeters later. I have some single birds with better technicals and which are closer to me. Albiet, even dirtier water and not with such nice poses.

[Gail Spitler]

Hi Ben - I thought I would take a stab at editing the image. I didn't do anything to the water. I took the image directly to PS - CS4 and used adjustment layers. First I selected just the white bodies and lightened them. Then I selected just the bills and lightened them. Then I selected all of the swans and saturated the red and yellow a bit (maybe too much, I think I see some red halo) and did a pass with unsharp mask. Mostly I wanted to see what I could get out of the image without too much work.

I am no PS expert, but do keep working at it. Thought you might be interested in the edit.

Cheers
Gail

[Ben Egbert]

Hi Ben - I thought I would take a stab at editing the image. I didn't do anything to the water. I took the image directly to PS - CS4 and used adjustment layers. First I selected just the white bodies and lightened them. Then I selected just the bills and lightened them. Then I selected all of the swans and saturated the red and yellow a bit (maybe too much, I think I see some red halo) and did a pass with unsharp mask. Mostly I wanted to see what I could get out of the image without too much work.

I am no PS expert, but do keep working at it. Thought you might be interested in the edit.

Cheers
Gail

Thanks Gail, always good to see what other can and would do with an image. I had a lot of red splotches in the water (noise I think and even after running NR) so I stayed away from reds. I tend to stay global when I work color. If I ever master accurate masks, I will do more of this selective stuff. I do use brushes, but not when the feature I am brushing must go to the absolute edges.

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Challenging shot, I might even spot meter it, if I had the opportunity and wanted to keep water dark. This is probably close to 0 in Eval,..on balance probably mid-tone gray image.

Swans are large in the frame and I can see this as a problem for Eval metering, +.6 was probably too much and blew out white details. keep on practicing, remember to balance the entire shot as a mid-tone gray in your mind and use EV to make any adjustments.

[Ben Egbert]

Challenging shot, I might even spot meter it, if I had the opportunity and wanted to keep water dark. This is probably close to 0 in Eval,..on balance probably mid-tone gray image.

Swans are large in the frame and I can see this as a problem for Eval metering, +.6 was probably too much and blew out white details. keep on practicing, remember to balance the entire shot as a mid-tone gray in your mind and use EV to make any adjustments.

Actually the raw is underexposed, I added +0.6 in post and still nothing blown. A really dark day. I use spot metering at least for first shots, then dial in via histogram. If I have changing light, I go to manual exposure.