Cormorant Portrait

[Milt Berko]

I was photographing the Green Heron nest I have been working at Wakodahatchee and this Cormorant landed on a rail very close by and simple sat there for a moment and stared. I love the eye color.

Olympus E-30
50-200mm ED Lens
1.4 TC
ISO 400
1/200
f/6.3
Center-weighted metering
Aperture Preferred
283mm

[Lance Peters]

Hi Milt - like the pose - couple of issues here....
Your whites are a little over in places - if you have over exposure warning on your camera turn it on and make use of your histogram.
Looks a little soft and lacking in fine detail.
BG would benefit from some NR.
Was the original under exposed???

[Milt Berko]

Hi Milt - like the pose - couple of issues here....
Your whites are a little over in places - if you have over exposure warning on your camera turn it on and make use of your histogram.
Looks a little soft and lacking in fine detail.
BG would benefit from some NR.
Was the original under exposed???

Lance, this is a large crop. I always watch the blinkies for the exposure and did not notice any warning, perhaps because the beak in the original was a very small portion of the image. Thanks for your extremely helpful comments as I was torn whether or not to post this image. I'm learning.

[Mark Young]

G'day Milt, we're all still learning, and we will probably never stop learning either. ;)

I like the pose and compostion of your image. The BG is nice and uncluttered, and you've captured the lovely colour of the eye.

[Bob Miller]

Hi Milt....agree with jeff ...well handled bg and pose...I would sharpen the eye especially and use the recovery slider if you shot in raw to bring back the beak. finally use some noise reduction to clear the bg of noise...Keep posting...You can learn alot on this forum!:)

[Dave Mills]

Hi Milt, Agree with Lances points. I like how you framed the image but the large crop caused some degradation...