This big boy was coming in for a rest mid Sunday morning in Shark Valley, Florida’s Everglades National Park. He was painted with a Nikon D300s, using a Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/4D - IF-ED , with a Nikkor 1.7 T/C.
Image Solution: focal length @ 510mm / exposure mode @ aperture priority / in camera matrix metering / 1/1,250sec. - f/9 / exposure comp @ -0.3EV / ISO @ 500 / white balance @ auto / AF - Mode @ AF - C / color space @ sRGB / lighting solution – ambient lighting / tone comp @ +1 degree / hue adjustment @ +1 degree / saturation factor @ +1 degree / support platform – hand held /
Great shot. Including the branch at the lower right shows us where he's headed without requiring more space in front of him, nicely balancing the whole image. I wouldn't change a thing.
Nice job on whites with such contrast. Nice exposure techs - f/9 over 1/1250 in AV@-1/3 - you controlled the light well. Still some noise in BG or maybe its my eyes on a Friday night.
I do not mind the shadows as much as I might like to see a horz crop - but the vert always displays the bird well too. Cool action shot, love the landing sequence. Feet dangling in the air is sweet - TFS.
Gus in my opinion there are two different things to take into account: 1) the things that you can do to improve the image in the processing job and 2) the things that you can´t do to improve the image in the processing job.
1) Things that you can do on the processing job:
- reduce noise levels in the Bg using a a different layer to keep details on the bird
- improve the composition with more room at the right and at the bottom because the bird/action is going in that direction and to avoid a very tight bird in the frame. If this is a crop you can made a different , more wide croping, and if the image is a full frame you can add canvas if it is OK with your ethics. I like the idea of keeping the perch in the frame but actually is very small for the bird so another vote for a wider crop to show more of the perch.
- Work on the eye because it seems a bit unnatural, like oversharpened compared with the other parts of the bird.
2) Things that you can´t do in the processing job:
- Modify the left wing position (in my opinion, a more extended wing is much better). The good news is that if this image belong to a long series perhaps you have another one with a better wing angle/position
I like the lading action and the eye contact and you did a good job with the exposure considering that the light is a bit intense. :)
In this repost I added another round of noise reduction to the Bg using a different layer in which I selected the sky and deleted the bird. Hope this helps ;)
This is a more detailed view of the layer that I used to work on the sky (some areas are refined with a brush in clear mode to avoidartifacts produced by the filter). The values for this filter (CS4) are the following: strenght: 10, Preserve details: 0, Reduce color noise: 97, Sharpen details: 0, Remove jpeg artifact: off
"Landing Gear Down"
