Being Watched

[LeeFortier]

Taken at the Seabird Sanctuary, Madiera Beach, FL. This is actually a wild bird that was spending time there. Temps were in the 40s and 50s. Birds were cold and hunkered down.
Taken 12/7/2010, 1155 AM, Nikon D200, Nikon 70-200, ISO 200, 1/1600 @ f2.8 (should have stopped down)

[Tom Redd]

Lee, I really like this shot! You may be right stopping down a bit would have given more DOF but you nailed the eye and for me, the DOF is still good. Great post.

[Levina de Ruijter]

What an unusual shot. I think it looks great. Much detail in that head. And a perfectly coloured BG. Wonderful!

[WIlliam Maroldo]

I like the composition, and I agree that a greater DOF was needed, at least to cover all of the head, but something strange happened as far as exposure goes. I suspect underexposure, but then again I suspect it alot. The dark face skin and the eye just doesn't look right, especially the eye that has much less detail than I would expect. So I have two questions. 1) how much was this image cropped 2) was the light, I'm thinking direct sunlight, directly overhead?? regards~Bill Sorry, I justed noticed you included the time, so forget that part. Were there clouds in the sky?

[Dave Leroy]

It is a very unusual shot and a unique pose.

Good comment about the dof. One suggestion that i have received is to take seral shots at different apertures to get a variety of dof's. It may be an option the next time.

From the look of the shadow lines just below the face it appears sun was high and just behind bird so face was in shade. Perhaps this is what Bill is looking at.

I might consider a tighter crop moving the eye into top right third point, just to see what composition looked like.

Colour combo looks excellent.

Dave

[LeeFortier]

I like the composition, and I agree that a greater DOF was needed, at least to cover all of the head, but something strange happened as far as exposure goes. I suspect underexposure, but then again I suspect it alot. The dark face skin and the eye just doesn't look right, especially the eye that has much less detail than I would expect. So I have two questions. 1) how much was this image cropped 2) was the light, I'm thinking direct sunlight, directly overhead?? regards~Bill Sorry, I justed noticed you included the time, so forget that part. Were there clouds in the sky?

The sun was almost directly overhead but the eye was in shade. Don't recall clouds but suspect there were some. I dodged the eye a tad to bring out the detail, a bit of USM and no crop.

Thanks

Thanks

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Hi Lee. The reason I asked about the crop is because sometimes a significant crop causes image degredation problems, but we can rule that out.
The reason I asked about the clouds is because without the diffusing effect they have on sunlight, a subject with extremes of brightness variation, from dark to bright, will exhibit serious exposure problems, that (in my opinion of course) have no satisfactory post-processing solution.
The problem here was due to the eye and surrounding area being in the shade. You exposed for the white plummage, which seems reasonable, but this left the shaded area significantly underexposed. Significant underexposure makes recovery of detail very unlikely.

Unfortunately a camera sensor's dynamic range doesn't cover the extreme range of brightness that existed in this scene. You can properly expose the light parts, or the darks, but not both. Actually either choice is a bad one, expose for the lights and you lose detail in the darks(which is what happened here); expose for the darks and you lose the lights (they become clipped which means pure white with no detail). Yech! Actually this is the reason HDR was invented, since if you take more than one image with different exposures and combine them you can capture the full range.
You have two choices. Avoid shadows by shooting early or late in the day with the sun at your back, when the contrast tends to be lower (but not always) or shoot when there are clouds, overcast, smoke, fog, mist, anything to scatter the direct sunlight. This diffuses the light which lowers the contrast and the sensor can capture the full range of brightness. Hope I've been helpful. regards~Bill

[LeeFortier]

Hi Lee. The reason I asked about the crop is because sometimes a significant crop causes image degredation problems, but we can rule that out.
The reason I asked about the clouds is because without the diffusing effect they have on sunlight, a subject with extremes of brightness variation, from dark to bright, will exhibit serious exposure problems, that (in my opinion of course) have no satisfactory post-processing solution.
The problem here was due to the eye and surrounding area being in the shade. You exposed for the white plummage, which seems reasonable, but this left the shaded area significantly underexposed. Significant underexposure makes recovery of detail very unlikely.

Unfortunately a camera sensor's dynamic range doesn't cover the extreme range of brightness that existed in this scene. You can properly expose the light parts, or the darks, but not both. Actually either choice is a bad one, expose for the lights and you lose detail in the darks(which is what happened here); expose for the darks and you lose the lights (they become clipped which means pure white with no detail). Yech! Actually this is the reason HDR was invented, since if you take more than one image with different exposures and combine them you can capture the full range.
You have two choices. Avoid shadows by shooting early or late in the day with the sun at your back, when the contrast tends to be lower (but not always) or shoot when there are clouds, overcast, smoke, fog, mist, anything to scatter the direct sunlight. This diffuses the light which lowers the contrast and the sensor can capture the full range of brightness. Hope I've been helpful. regards~Bill

Thanks for all the info. Hope I can remember all of it.