This common loon had just surfaced in front of me on a northern Michigan lake. I was struck by the water beading on his head, almost in rows. Nature's jewelry.
D700 500mm f/4 with 1.4x, at f/6.3 1/2000s ev -.7 ISO 1250
Pedestal mounted in boat
Post:
CS4 PS curves, sharpening, linear burn on breast. The whites were well controlled in the PSD file, but in converting to sRGB and downsizing for the web, which required a lot of compression to make it under the limits, some of the whites got hotter.
50% crop. The eyes are untouched except for slight sharpening. No saturation changes, no lightening. Just nature's magic.
Advice appreciated, esp. tips to prevent the change in whites from the conversion to jpeg and with heavy compression.
I like the goofy look, good angle and soft light, too. I would try to get more details in the blacks and tone down the whites and I would run NR on the BG.
Nice one Randy. I like the crop, pose and super BG. I noticed the same sort of linear beads of water on the head of a Cape Petrel the other day when processing the image. I have still never had an opportunity to photography loons here in their "home country"!
There is some noise in this image (which surprises me from the D700- heavy crop??). If you remove it you will be able to used a better quality jpeg compression and get the file under 200K.
I bumped up the sharpness of the eyes in Ps and it worked. I would suggest trying this.
Randy, interesting curve of the neck pose, and just love those red eyes. Comp works for me, and the droplets do resemble sparkling jewelry. I agree on some NR on the BG.
Nice shot Randy and a unique pose not often shown. Details are apparent in the whites which is sometimes tough to get. I often check whites with Color Cop and see them often posted in the 230 to 240 range. I have no idea how to keep them down in conversion other than to start low. Dave
Bejeweled King of the Lake
Reply With Quote
