Roy- Nice intimate portrait of what should be Canada's national bird (I don't think it's official yet). Your composition is classic with the eye close to the "rule of thirds" point. You have lots of detail in the blacks and whites which is not easy. The soft light you had helped hugely here.
I think a few things could greatly improve the image. First, I am seeing noise in the darker tones of the image including the BG, head and eye. Was the eye lightened? This may have brought out the noise. I would try to remove from BG and eye as I don't think the noise in the dark feathers is so much of an issue. I do this by zooming in on the eye and using a blur brush over the iris, trying not to blur the edges. I'd also burn-in (darken) the pupil. Second I think a small boost in contrast is needed so long as the details in the shadows and highlights are maintained. Third, I would punch the saturation a little to get more red out of the eye and brighten the BG a little. Of these I think removing noise is the most important.
Vince- You obviously like Roy's image, as I do. Could you say why you like it.
Beautiful portrait, Roy. Love the water color and composition. Great advice from John; cleaning up the noise in the eye and bg, along with a bit of saturation of the eye, will produce a very handsome image. I just wish the head were turned a bit toward you.
Roy, there's a lot to love here but I've got one comment and it's probably just me - but the shoulder furthest from the FG seems almost disconnected from the rest of the bird. Maybe because it's lighter? Maybe just the angle of the pose? I'm not really sure...it just seems a bit "off" for some reason. That said, I still really like the image because of the soft lighting and the amount of detail you managed to bring out in the blacks. Awesome!
The repost is an improvement but the image lacks punch and vibrance, surely a result of the poor lighting conditions. The bird's head is angled away a bit but even if it were square to the back of the camera it would still be a poor head angle in this case as the bird is angled towards us.... In these cases the head needs to be on straight. Again, I urge all to study the links in the Head Angle sticky at the top of this page.
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Loon portrait
