Air Drop

[Jon Hall]

Greetings to all from the Pacific Northwest. Yes, we have Osprey here in Seattle also. It appeared as though you were lacking photos of these magnificent birds (:D), so I thought I would make my first post a "Sea Hawk" from Seattle!
This is "Mom" dropping nesting material to "Dad" who is in the nest about 10 feet below.
I'm using a D90, shooting in RAW and using Elements for PP. (I'm a beginner)
I'm having a little trouble with my PP technique as I am quite sure it couldn't be the camera operator, and I was hoping to glean a little of the vast amounts of expertise available from BPN. Alright, the photographer needs help too. My exposure was off in the RAW image so I tweaked in ACR as follows:
Exposure: +0.95
Brightness: +41
Contrast: -4
Saturation: 0
Luminance Smoothing: 100

Am I way off the mark?
I also had to tone down some hot spots on the whites of the wing and head, did a little overall sharpening and then a little more on the head and eye and cropped to portrait.
I'm new to this game, so any and all advise would be greatly appreciated.

I will never be able to give as much as I get from this community, but I'm glad I found you all and look
forward to contributing my 0.00002 cents worth.


Nikon D90
70-300 VR at 240mm
1/2500 F/8 ISO 400
Hand held.

[Meesh Fink]

Hi Jon! I'm learning, so my two cents is worth maybe 0.00002 cents, too. Please feel free to comment on my photos as part of your learning process. :)

My comments, then. The bird looks pretty good in that you caught the focus and it's a nice pose. It's a good behavioral photo with action. :) I think a horizontal crop might look good for this photo so there's not as much empty air above the bird. It also kind of looks like there is too much NR on the bird? It has that look of being too smooth. There also seems to be a slight halo around it.

Good job on your first post, BTW.

[Lance Peters]

hi John - big warm welcome to BPN - DON'T HESITATE to jump right in and leave comments on other peoples images -no better or faster way to improve your own, all we ask is that you say what it is you like or dont like about the image you are commenting on.

Couple of hints....
1. Turn your over exposure blinkies on in camera
2. Make use of your histogram
3. Push your exposure as far to the right as possible - Dont want any blown highlights though!

Lets see what everyone else has to say - will come back later :)

[Ricardo Rodriguez]

Hi Jon, nice capture. I'm with Meesh on the halo. I would also crop to a much tighter frame. The bird does seem a bit underexposed. Lance makes great suggestions, and #3 seems especially relevant for this image. We all improve if we practice, practice. Love the pose and the action.; keep 'em coming!

[Alfred Forns]

Jon Big Warm Welcome !!! ... I have to check but I think those birds are all over the world except the poles?

Excellent comments ... can add If you had some bright areas on the head and the underside was under expose ... light was harsh, not much you can do except shoot in softer light. btw if you shoot in Av give the compensation or in manual just say how you derived at the exposure, will make a difference evaluating.

In PS you can add contrast to the under wings, they seem flat from opening up the shadows and btw when you can do switch over to PS, most tutorial, advices etc apply directly. Have tried helping out students with Elements and has been tough. One thing you can do while using Elements is staying away from anything automatic !! Looking forward to the next one !!!

[Desmond Chan]

My exposure was off in the RAW image so I tweaked in ACR as follows:
Exposure: +0.95
Brightness: +41
Contrast: -4
Saturation: 0
Luminance Smoothing: 100

Am I way off the mark?

I reversed your settings in Photoshop to try to see what your original looked like (not sure if that would work) and found the "reversed" image does look dark.

I also had to tone down some hot spots on the whites of the wing and head

If your original is under, then I wonder why there would be any hot spots. Perhaps they were created by your adjustments to "Brightness" and "Contrast"?

Anyhow, I find photographing ospreys could be tricky under sunlight. If you have the exposure of the under-wing right, the white area on the crown of the ospreys likely would be blown. Photographing on a cloudy day (not that unusual in Pacific NorthWest) usually is better in this regard. As long as the details in the blown whites can be recovered, it's fine with me.

As presented, a little more cropping, if you can afford it, would be fine, too. Overall, it stills look a bit dark to me on my monitor. Perhaps you could try Al's suggestion re "Shadows and Highlights".

Welcome aboard, Jon !

[Jon Hall]

Thank you for the input! This is exactly what I've been looking for.

Meesh:

It also kind of looks like there is too much NR on the bird? It has that look of being too smooth.

I didn't use any noise reduction at all and this was a RAW image so I don't believe it was in camera NR. Elements may have snuck some in while I wasn't looking...I'll have to check the settings. Is the halo from over-sharpening? I seem to get that a lot in my PP images and it bugs me.

Lance:

Couple of hints....
1. Turn your over exposure blinkies on in camera
2. Make use of your histogram

I dug into the camera menu and found my blinkie switch...thank you
I took this shot before I discovered BPN and learned how to use the histogram. I got it now.

Al:

I have to check but I think those birds are all over the world except the poles?

You are correct, sir.

when you can do switch over to PS

You would recommend upgrading the software before upgrading glass, camera body or photographer?
Would CS4 get me by for a while?

btw if you shoot in Av give the compensation or in manual just say how you derived at the exposure,

I looked at the EXIF data and discovered I shot this in AUTO..don't know what I was thinking, I think this was more of a grab shot. I generally shoot either manual or Aperture Priority. I'll add that info in future posts.

Desmond:

I find photographing ospreys could be tricky under sunlight.

I love a challenge! It will be all that much more rewarding when I finally get "that shot".

Thank you again for all the input. I couldn't get this much education anywhere else for 100 times the cost!

I hope I post this properly, otherwise it'll be a mess.:eek:

[Meesh Fink]

Hi Jon,

I might be mistaken since I don't use ACR, but I believe 'luminance smoothing' at 100 would be the NR that could make it look smooth.

You probably know this already, but if you want to keep feather detail while removing noise from the sky, you can make a duplicate layer in PSE, remove the bird from it using the lasso tool, and apply NR only on that layer. You can use sharpening on the layer with the bird - then the sky won't show sharpening artefacts. There may be a better way to do it in PSE, if so, I look forward to hearing it. :)

Cheers,
Meesh

[Jon Hall]

Thanks Meesh,
I think you may be correct on the luminance smoothing. I don't remember fiddling with that so it may be one of those "auto" things Al was mentioning.
So much to learn!

Jon