Taken on Espanola Island, Galapagos. Unfortunately we were at the end of the path by the "Albatross Airport" so I could not change position for a better sun angle or to avoid the other albatross in the lrc. The main subject started to do his mating ritual and the one in the bg decided to mimic the display.
Canon 50D
100-400 @ 130mm
1/640
f8
ISO 200
Exp. Comp -1.0
HH, cropped on rhs to remove head of oof albatross, S/H adjustment, increased contrast and sharpened
C&C and suggestions welcome and appreciated. Thanks,
Rachel, I like the juxtaposition of the two birds, with their very similar postures. Your self critique about the sun angle is spot although the sun looks pretty high in the sky here and would have presented problems for you no matter where you were. I see you ran Shadows and Highlights in Ps. I think maybe you could have been a bit more agressive about bringing out the shadows. Running SH on the Luminosity channel of LAB colour works very well BTW. You could try some dodging too.
Rachel, it's too bad you had the sun fighting you here because it's a dandy image. I agree with John that the position of the birds, the DOF, and the overall composition is very good but that light is a killer. You might try John's suggestion of running SH in the Luminosity channel...other than that...play with some of the filters and see if you can't save the image in sketch form, black and white, painting, etc. When you have strong bones like this one has it's a shame to lose it over the lighting. Play some more and see what you can come up with!
Thanks John and Jules for the comments and suggestions.
Jules - I tried playing around with the various filters. This is not usually my thing, but thought I'd experiment. I liked flourescent chalk the best. Let me know what you think.
Rachel, I like it...I'd try to bring up the front area so it's a little lighter. You might try playing with the opacity of the artistic filter layer and see if that helps...if not, use the levels adjustment and then mask out anything that gets too light.
Waved Albatross Mimic
