Crested Auklet

[Myer Bornstein]

This crested auklet was doing its dance on the edge of the cliff on St. Paul Island in the Pribilof's. The crested auklet is one of the many Alcids that is present on the island.
Nikon D. 300 S. 500 mm F4 at F8 1/500. Adjusted in light room and in Photoshop slight crop, and the bird droppings were cloned out

[Krijn Trimbos]

A very very cool bird! Nice pose and setting. The HA is a bit unfortunate with it angled away from the viewer. Also the orange of the beak seems overexposed. If you shot this in RAW you could maybe see what you can do playing with the exposure slider and than do a double conversion, one where the beak is exposed correctly (showing detail) and one where the bird is correctly exposed like this one. Than you can blend the two together in PS. Of course this has to fit your personal ethics. It might be worth puling back the saturation slider in PS to see what happens......

[Myer Bornstein]

Thanks Krijn
I selected the beak and lightened it, what do you think? As for the head angle what you see is what you get I was in a hole at the edge of a cliff and the bird was on an outcropping and did not turn towards me no way I could have changed my position

[Krijn Trimbos]

Thanks Krijn
I selected the beak and lightened it, what do you think? As for the head angle what you see is what you get I was in a hole at the edge of a cliff and the bird was on an outcropping and did not turn towards me no way I could have changed my position

Myer,

The beak still looks hot IMHO. I think lightening will only make it worse and I would try to burn the hot pixels or desaturate them. However the best way to resolve the problem is to go back to RAW and do a double conversion, so create two TIFF files from your RAW file. One with the right exposure for the beak (probably the rest of the bird will look too dark then), and one for the bird where the beak will look too hot like in the shot you posted. Then merge the two together; just select the entire picture of the one with the correctly exposed beak and move it on top of the one with the correctly exposed bird. PS will automatically generate a new layer on top of the background layer (in this case the TIFF with the correctly exposed bird) allign them correctle and with layer masks you can then selectively paint your correctly exposed beak over the hot beak of the Background layer. Merge the two layers and you will have a correctly exposed bird. I hope this makes sense

Cheers,

Krijn

[Deborah Harrison]

Difficult bird to photograph without falling off a cliff and certainly no room to maneuver to achieve a different angle!
Agree that the beak and the white of the eye appear blown on my monitor.

[David Gancarz]

The Pribilof's. What a great trip that must have been for a birder and photographer! I read that these guys nest in enormous colonies. Is the bird performing a courtship display in your photo?

To add to the C&C, I also note some ringing on the edge of the cliff against the blue sky (or Bearing sea?), which I assume is due to sharpening. I'd suggest using masks to selectively sharpen just the in-focus parts of the image.

[Blake Shadle]

Hi Myer. You did a pretty good job walking the tight rope of exposure. The whites of his eye look bright, but I've never seen the bird in real life :) My only comment is related to exposure. I'd like to see a little more room under your subject's feet (he feels a little cramped to me), and while some may feel exposing more of the green at the bottom of the frame would be distracting, I feel that it would make for a nice compositional element. I'd also take a whole lot of the front. I tighter composition like this would really emphasize that wonderful pose you've captured. Thanks for sharing!