Swift Tern

[Stu Bowie]

Taken a year ago whilst I was down at the coast for a long weekend. The catch in the bill hopefully adds a little more interest to the image.

Canon 50D
100-400 @ 400mm
1/2500
F/5.6
ISO 400

Exp Comp +0.33
Hand held from the beach.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Sharpness, eye contact and setting look good and the catch adds to it although I have no idea what that is. :) I wish the far wing were all the way down and the whites look as if you recovered them. Were they overexposed originally?

[Stu Bowie]

Sharpness, eye contact and setting look good and the catch adds to it although I have no idea what that is. :) I wish the far wing were all the way down and the whites look as if you recovered them. Were they overexposed originally?

Thanks Axel, Ive just had a look at the RAW file, and there wasnt a single hot pixel in the whole image. During processing and just before saving, I found the whites to be a tad hot, and used a linear burn to sort them out. With regards to the catch, it looks like part of a fish.

[Stu Bowie]

Can someone please explain how the whites can become blown during processing, when the original RAW was spot on. Most of my pp work is just a bit of levels, crop to size, NR, sharpening, and thats it. Im viewing this on my laptop, and can see that Ive overdone the linear burn on the neck, thus Axel's comment on the whites.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Can someone please explain how the whites can become blown during processing, when the original RAW was spot on. Most of my pp work is just a bit of levels, crop to size, NR, sharpening, and thats it. Im viewing this on my laptop, and can see that Ive overdone the linear burn on the neck, thus Axel's comment on the whites.

I don't think they are overexposed, they just look very bright and have not many details. The greenish/grayish cast is probably due to your burning technique. An image that looks fine in TIFF can have blocked blacks and bright/overexposed whites after sRGB conversion as this color space has a narrower gamut.

[Tony Whitehead]

Agree with Axel that sRGB conversion is often the culprit. Look at the histogram as you covert and you will often see the the right side move to the right and clip. Looks like a chunk of thieved sardine (pilchard} bait from a fisherman;)

[Stu Bowie]

Axel, Tony, thanks a stack for the feedback - makes sense.

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the IQ, light, pose and OOF surf BG Stu...a bird I still need to photograph

[Fabs Forns]

Adding contrast may be the culprit, Stu, as it tends to darken the darks and lighten the whites.
Very nice flight pose in pretty habitat. Save some habitat for Sept's project ;)

[denise ippolito]

Stuart, Nice flight shot . I like the background and sharpness.

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent Stuart love the pose and the catch, sometimes need to bring down the whites a tad more for JPEG, especially if color space is for TIFF is something other than SRGB, "save for web" in photoshop also causes tonal compression, will lose subtle highlight details if don't bring down enough!!!

TFS

[Stu Bowie]

Thank you all for the great feedback and comments. Always appreciated.