Shot at Mill Creek Marsh, Secaucus, NJ, USA. Shot at 7:24 a.m., 9/11/10, with a Sony A700 & Sigma 150-500 DG APO HSM. PP was done with PSE ver. 6.0 There was a "good" crop here, some sharpening, saturation increase & some highlights were toned down in the wings. I also cloned out some particulates in the water. Critiques are welcomed, always looking to improve.
Stats:
Handheld
Manual Exp.
FL: 360mm
ISO 160
F10
1/3200th
EV +2
WB: Daylight
Spot Metering
Hey Al,
Just about a perfect wingspread! White look a bit muddy on the wings so you can go into selective color>white> and remove some black to see what happens. Just minor tweaks as everything else is spot on!
Al, I love the bird...what a beautiful position you captured him in. It's really outstanding. The only area I'm struggling with is the background. I'm seeing an aweful lot of blotchiness...probably from the large crop but some of it also appears to be noise. I tried running a round of noise reduction and that didn't eliminate it so then I tried a selective surface blur and that still didn't help. Finally I opened a levels adjustment and took the BG color almost all the way to black and that finally hid the splotches that I'm seeing.
Thanks for the kind words, critique & corrective suggestions everyone. I will take time to rework this image with your comments in mind. Julie... the blotchiness you refer to results from removal of some particulates in the BG. My PP skills aren't as good as they should be. I simply tried to clone those more noticable objects, small twigs, grasses, bubbles, etc.. I used the Clone Tool @ about 80% opacity and tried to use lower noisy areas as a base.
Snowy Egret in Flight
Posting Permissions
