Flying In The Clouds

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

This was taken yesterday evening , The cattle egrets were busy nest building at Wakodahatchee and there were numerous opportunities for flight images.

Nikon D300
Nikon 300 mm F 2.8
!/1250, F6.3
manual

All comments are welcome. Thanks !

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

I Iove the warm light,bg...pose!!!

[Juan Aragonés]

Nice warm light Judy. I would try to tone down a bit the cloud in order to improve the isolation of the bird and to increase the dramatism of the light. A round of nosise reduction in the BG would help a lot ;)

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Hi Juan , Thanks for taking the time to comment. I nearly always use a little NR but in this image was afraid of losing some detail in the whites but I will definitely give it a try and good suggestion about the clouds. Again many thanks !!

[Hendri Venter]

Lovely light and full stretched wings. I always like broken clouds in the BG but its such a pity it wasn't a bit further to the back to get the bird against the blue sky.

[christopher galeski]

nice flight shot Judy,like the detail in the whites,nice wing position,like the clouds in with the blue sky.thanks.

[Nancy A Elwood]

Judy really beautiful light and I love the sky!

[Manjesh Lingamurthy]

Hi Judy

Nice warm light, lovely background with the clouds and well exposed whites with details. I do see some noise in the sky, inspite of NR. Info on the ISO and the amount of cropping might explain this.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Thanks Manjesh for your comments. My ISO was 400 which would not create much noise but I did not use NR because I wanted to keep as much detail in the whites as possible. Sometimes using NR it will flatten the image somewhat and thus you do not get all the fine detail. Also it was not a big crop as I know this is one of the biggest causes of noise. Since it is almost routine to use NR I will try it on this image and see what happens.

Thanks and see you soon !!

[Stephen Stephen]

Judy I really like the warm light, up-swept wings and the breeding colours.

If you want to protect the bird's whites why not quick mask the bird and then apply noise reduction only to the BG?

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Thanks Stephen !!! Definitely isolating the bird would protect the feather detail. Many thanks for taking the time to comment. Look forward to seeing more posts and one of these days I hope to get to Ottawa !!!! :D