American coot portrait

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

I spent an awesome evening on Saturday with the coots. got a few good keepers. Will post them here one a day.

40D. 400 f5.6. iso 400. f/9. 1/320 hand held. White on bill a bit toasted. There might be a color cast( am really bad at that)....but I tried to process it such that it will appear as close to what I saw through the viewfinder. I always find PP-ing sunset-light images difficult.

All opinions welcome. Thx in advance.

[Aidan Briggs]

I love the light, the water reflections, and the details. That eye is intense. I wish for just a tad more of a head turn.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Pretty cool, I like the light, sharpness, reflection on the chest and water colors. The bill is not overexposed but I would tone it down a bit anyway.

[Fabs Forns]

Very well done portrait, on a difficult to expose bird. Soft light was on your side resulting in a pleasing image. TFS.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Thanks everyone. Light was awesome and the coots very cooperative. Challenge was finding one that was isolated. I got a lot of shots where the bokeh also was coots and because of the white beaks, very distracting.

[Fabs Forns]

Thanks everyone. Light was awesome and the coots very cooperative. Challenge was finding one that was isolated. I got a lot of shots where the bokeh also was coots and because of the white beaks, very distracting.

You know what I do to the Coots, learned this fro Artie. Select the bill with Color Range, feather some, take the selection to a new layer and use Multiply as blending mode. It brings out a lot of detail.

[Danny J Brown]

Hey KD - This is a stunning shot! Duck hunters don't like coots much but they sure are great photography subjects.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Thx.

Here's one with more conventional head turn. Did some work on the highlights in the beak.

[Harshad Barve]

Hi KD
I liked both images and I must say these are one of better images of yours
TFS

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Liked the second one for balance . But I must say, the exposure is awesome !! Lovely one KD!!

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice portraits with good detail and pleasing BG, I like the last one better.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Hey KD - This is a stunning shot! Duck hunters don't like coots much but they sure are great photography subjects.

I'm glad that hunters don't like them. It's not so great if people shoot the animals you want to photograph. :)

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Thx all. I agree that the balance in second one is better. I personally like 'looking back' poses a lot...hence prefer the first one more. But agree that the head should be turned more.

Fabs...thx for the photoshop suggestion but I am not that advanced an user yet. I dont even have photoshop cs4 and admitedly, havent explred many things in photoshop elements. I could recover a lot by just playing with the highlights slider in DPP( as seen in the second image).

[Kiran Poonacha]

I like both too Bhai, nice expo and details captured...