I passed through Aransas NWR to feed the mosquitoes and decided to shoot a few images while I was there. The beak is a little hot and the BG isn't as smooth as if I had used the 600 f4 but all in all I like it.
I laid down on a boardwalk that crosses a little stream to get a nearly eye level shot
EOS1DMK4 manual
800 f5.6L IS resting on the tripod foot
ISO 400
1/800@ f5.6
PS- This is un-cropped. I think I need to trim a little from the right side of the image. I also would have liked to have gotten all of the reflection. Next time...
Excellent detail in the blacks, and if you have to do a trade off, whites vs. darks, on this bird, I think you made the right choice.
Because the reflection is distorted, I don't think having a complete one would add much to the image.
In regard to the background, its unfortunate that the strong vertical lines occur right behind his head, but I think you have some lee way to tweak that a bit in post.
Michael:
I had a few seconds, so here is my take on a possible crop, just for the sake of discussion. I smoothed out the background a bit, you can do better on the raw. It is slightly tighter than I would prefer ideally, but I wanted to try a version without the bright bill showing in the reflection.
Randy's crop suggestion is the best compromise here as the reflection is purposefully cut. Michael, on your repost the clipped back skimming along the bottom edge is not ideal. You really nailed the exposure on the coot!
I love shooting coots. You nailed the exposure. Excellent shooting angle as well. I liked the BG. Randy's crop makes it better.
Did you try playing with the highlights and contrast sliders? You might be able to get some more details in the beak. Try it. For your reference, here's one of my images.....the highlight and contrast sliders( I use DPP, but whatever you use for raw conversion should have them) helped me a lot in getting the details in both black and white
I use a seemingly complex but simple to do process for building depth into an image and toning up or down "spots". I use luminosity, hue, and saturation layers in conjunction with gradient masks to build in the illusion of depth as well as spot touch up places that need it. Unfortunately the beak was blown and those places aren't recoverable. A little dodging and burning helped though. In the second image I got lazy and didn't apply all of the usual corrections, so I ended up with a background that was too dark and an overall "unbalanced" look. I messed the crop up too :) I've added a quick run through version of the above to this post
American Coot
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