Galapagos Dove

[Rachel Hollander]

Taken in the Galapagos Islands in April 2009:

Canon 50D
100-400 at 400mm, handheld
Tv 1/400
Av f 4.0
ISO 800


No crop, just cleaned up top left background to get rid of darker area (See I'm learning already).

C&C welcome and appreciated.

Thanks, Rachel

[Rachel Hollander]

Btw I went back and forth about cloning out the light circles as well but decided to leave them in the end. Probably the wrong choice but I sort of liked the texture and was nervous about cloning that close to the bird.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Rachel Going after the circle could get messy, need to do a perfect selecting of the bird !! Would give it a try !!

I like the clean bg, exposure and detail, might just lighten some? Crop wise wish you had a little more a the bottom, toe is very tight !!! Very appealing image, like it a lot !!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Rachel, Why not give it a try? Make a duplicate image and play with it. With some practice you can take it out if so desired. Agree with Al's comments and for my taste I would take some off the left...

[Desmond Chan]

Mostly agree with others. Overall this looks very good to me. Good job !

[Thanaboon Jearkjirm]

Nice feather details and HA, I never see this species before but agree about lighten the bird a bit. Here is one of the tip in cloning, but remember that there are many way to do this, http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=60463

Galapagos must be fun, I envy you :)

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks for all the comments. I cropped a little off each side but more on the left, lightened it and took a stab at getting rid of the brighter spots. It seems to have created a little halo around the bird although I did not do any additional sharpening. Please let me have your suggestions and thoughts. Thanks

Rachel

[Bill Dix]

Hi Rachael. Just returned from the Galapagos myself, and I didn't get as good a Dove image as this. I agree the brightening of the bird helped, but I might consider going back and adding some saturation to the blue around the eye to recover what you lost in lightening it. I'm not an expert on quick masks, but I wonder if when you selected the bird prior to removing the bright circle, you might have feathered the selection too much, or not selected tightly enough to the bird's outline, resulting in the halo you see. The halo looks like a residual piece of the bright yellow circle, rather than any sharpening artifact. Nice shot.

[Rachel Hollander]

Bill- thanks for the comments. Hope you had a great trip to the Galapagos. Which boat did you go on? Btw I took another stab at the dove image. Here it is:

[Bill Dix]

Rachel, second repost is much better! I was on a 16-person "eco-catamaran" called Archipell. A fantastic trip.

[Rachel Hollander]

Bill - thanks for the comment. I went on the 32 person Evolution when I went. Rachel