Christmas Eve Long Tail Duck

[Michael Lotito]

Canon 1D Mark 4 With EF 500mm f4 & 1.4 tc
1/4000 sec, F8, ISO 800

Shot from my pickup truck window on Eastern Long Island Sound. I am interested in comments on my post processing.

Mike

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Mike, You did much better with this one than the last one but you still need lessons :)

Are you converting in ACR? (There are too many over-exposed pixels in the white neck and that surprised me because when I saw this image on your i-pad the whites looked OK.....

For my repost I cropped top and bottom and did some Eye Doctor work.

I love the bird bobbing on the way and the raised tail and the perfect pose and head angle. And I am betting that the exposure was better than the RAW conversion....

Oops. Originally forgot the repost....

[Arthur Morris]

ps: Best advice: start over and reconvert making sure to recover any hot pixels. See the many Saving the Whites threads in the ER and also in Digital Basics.

[Michael Lotito]

Artie,

I may have found my problem. I applied a curves adjustment and created the hot pixels. The repost simply turns off that adjustment.

[Arthur Morris]

Much better but still a few too many hot pixels (but not on the breast). See the Eye Doctor work in Pane 2. I forgot to attach the repost the first time around :)

[Chris Martinez]

The repost looks heaps more natural colour wise. Love all the drops of water over the head and back. That is a truly stunning duck!
I can't really comment on your processing as I'm not sure what you've done and I'm not really in a position to be schooling people in PS:o I certainly feel that an eye touch up on the lines of what the Boss did would really be beneficial.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I love the perspective - hard to believe this was taken from your truck, very cool! I too love the water drops. Artie's recrop is much better balanced though. On all versions there is a pale halo around the curved tail feathers that make me wonder if you tried to lighten those with some of it spilling into the water around them? Just something that caught my eye....

[Arthur Morris]

I love the perspective - hard to believe this was taken from your truck, very cool! I too love the water drops.

It must have been a really big wave!

[philperry]

I love the way the bird is sitting downhill on a wave Michael. And a super tail shape.

Very nice shot with great sparky lighting.