Ruddy Turnstone at Barnegat

[Bill Dix]

D90; 80-400 VR @ 370mm.. ISO 400; f/9 @1/500s. Matrix metering @ -1.7EV (too dark; adjusted +0.45 in RAW conversion). Cropped to 65% of original size.

Barnegat Lighthouse on Monday. No harlequins that day, but plenty of turnstones, dunlins, BBPL and sanderlings. This fellow and his friends posed nicely for just a minute. For once, maybe just a bit less of head-turn would have been better. Rocks didn't permit me to get lower. Had to clone out a part of another bird, lower the contrast and darken the highlights in the water beyond. C&C appreciated.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Sharpness, light and setting look good. A bit more eye contact would have been nice. Why did you reduce the contrast?

[Bill Dix]

Thank you Axel. I reduced the contrast in the BG layer only, because as-shot the wavelets produced strong dark and light bands behind the bird that I thought were distracting. I thought that by reducing the contrast and darkening the highlights it would mellow out the BG a bit. Thanks for looking.

[Harshad Barve]

Beautiful image with lovely pose , compo and sharpness
TFS

[Ofer Levy]

Lovely image!

[Tony Whitehead]

Lovely warm tones of the bird against the cool BG. I like the patterns in the BG but there seems to be some posterisation showing. Rock and weed is superb.

[Chris van Rooyen]

Lovely light and foreground. I see a little posterisation in the background?

[Bill Dix]

Lovely warm tones of the bird against the cool BG. I like the patterns in the BG but there seems to be some posterisation showing. Rock and weed is superb.

Thank you all for looking. Tony and Chris, what would cause the posterisation? Is that from trying to lighten an underexposed RAW file in RAW transfer or from lightening the BG during PP? (That is, if I go back to the original RAW file, is there a way to avoid it in re-processing?)

[Tony Whitehead]

Thank you all for looking. Tony and Chris, what would cause the posterisation? Is that from trying to lighten an underexposed RAW file in RAW transfer or from lightening the BG during PP? (That is, if I go back to the original RAW file, is there a way to avoid it in re-processing?)

Bill, the posterisation/banding probably due to a combination of going from 16 to 8 bit colour depth, changing to sRGB colour space which will probably be smaller than the space you edited in and possibly added to by jpg compression for web.

[Bill Dix]

Bill, the posterisation/banding probably due to a combination of going from 16 to 8 bit colour depth, changing to sRGB colour space which will probably be smaller than the space you edited in and possibly added to by jpg compression for web.

Thank you Tony. As you say, probably a combination. It is definitely more pronounced in the web jpg, but I think there is a hint of it in the processed TIFF master file. Thank you for pointing this out -- I can see the posterisation clearly but hadn't noticed it until you and Chris mentioned it.

[Arthur Morris]

I love the soft look of the bird and the two types of seaweed. And yes, a bit less head turn would have been the bomb. Love the BKGR and the pose atop the rock--not easy to do as these guys always scurrying and usually in the shade.

[Bill Dix]

I love the soft look of the bird and the two types of seaweed. And yes, a bit less head turn would have been the bomb. Love the BKGR and the pose atop the rock--not easy to do as these guys always scurrying and usually in the shade.

Thank you, Artie, for the kind remarks.

[James Salywoda]

Awesome bird and excellent setting sure a bit more eye contact would of been nice but still a great shot.