American Oystercatcher

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Sony A700~Sony70-400G~ISO1600~1/500sec~F6.3~manual exposure~HH~9-20-2010~Texas City Dike~CS4~Redfield Fractalius

The Texas City Dike has always been my favorite place to photograph oystercatchers, and I really missed the photo ops during the 2 years the dike was closed. Comments and critique welcomed, regards~Bill

my website

[Kerry Perkins]

Bill, I always like your images and always wish for more contrast and color. ;) For this one I would recommend some selective noise reduction on the background. It seems to me to be almost a texture, but not quite. There is a bit of a halo around the bird. Very nice composition.

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Bill.

I guess Kerry and I both have olde age eyes as I agree with the saturation and contrast, but know you have a vision that may be otherwise.

As usual you captured your subject though. Nice!

[denise ippolito]

Bill, I'm fine w/ the color and contrast-different strokes.:) I might evict the 2 darker spots on the left edge if it were mine. I also agree w/ Kerry regarding the NR. I might add a smidge more room on top if it were mine but just a touch. Nice use of the filter and I like the pose. Seeing the feet is always a bonus.Perfect head turn too.

[Paul Lagasi]

As alway bill like the subject and effect but in this instance I gotta agree would like to see a bit more contrast...TFS

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Thanks guys. Kerry; good point about the background and I have ways to fix it. The white halo around part of the bird is strictly the result of jpeg conversion, and definitely not due to sharpening, the usual cause, since I didn't use it on the image.
Denise: as usual I appreciate your keen eye for detail.
Interesting comments about low saturation and contrast, and I am in agreement that a bit more contrast would help. But not much. I have to concede that I have an afinity for low contrast images when used with Fractalius. I think they remind me of watercolors and the low contrast/saturation emphasize the black lines created by Fractalius. I also shoot primarily in soft (low contrast) light since I often specifical aim for for high-key images, so base images start out low contrast with low saturation. I might also add that when processing I dup layer, apply Fractalius to top layer, to the bottom layer(the base) I increase saturation considerably, increase contrast, and reduce brightness. Back on the top layer I use a history brush to revert eyes back to base image. Then decrease opacity on top layer to about 50%, then flatten image. regards~Bill

[Kerry Perkins]

Bill, thanks for sharing your workflow - I think it goes on the list. ;) One of the cool aspects of the Fractalius filter is that it can give you so many different looks. I tend to do more saturated, heavy line or electric glow types, you like the less saturated and more understated look, and one of our posters here once said that they only ever used the black and white presets. So many different styles and all are good! I really like your web site. What happened to your sig?