This was taken my second day this year at the La Jolla Cliffs, Jan. 19, 8:45 am.
Canon 7D, 70-200 mm f4 IS. hand-held at 200 mm, ISO 1250, f6.3, 1/1600 sec.
Processed first in LR3 and then in CS5: Pixel Genius PKSharpener Pro 2 (capture sharpening), then Topaz Denoise 5 used conservatively, followed by Topaz Adjust 4 for some exposure balancing, burned in the brighter areas of the torso, and added contrast with a Curves layer. Lastly, I added a little more canvas along the top using Content Aware Fill, followed by some cleanup. I chose to leave the water droplets coming off its legs.
The pelican looks a little skinny; it's either the angle or the poor bird hasn't eaten enough breakfast.
Comments and critiques most welcome.
Last edited by Steve Gould; 02-01-2011 at 02:07 AM.
It's a nice wing spread, but I agree that the reds and whites are blown. There's also a yellow cast to the image. I would see what you can save in PS and if you have more room, I would go for a wider crop.
Aravind, you're totally right. This is my first season shooting the La Jolla pelicans in mating color, and I got carried away so that I didn't notice that. Most of the detail in the pouch is there in the RAW - but not all - and I lost it mainly brightening it in LR3. So, I backed up - no brightness, no vibrance adjustments here - and resent it to CS5. I found I was also losing a lot of the detail in the pouch with the noise reduction, and with nearly every adjustment I made. So, I had to do quite a bit of masking to hang onto most of it. Now I know how deadly those beautiful reds can be on these birds!
Here's the repost. In re-doing it, I think I got rid of that bit of yellow cast Bryan noticed, too. As for the crop, Bryan, what you see is the full capture plus some canvas extension at the top.
Robert, thanks for your suggestions. I agree. I did remove all the vibrance I had originally added in LR3. Will try some desaturation of the reds in CS5. As for the beak intersecting the wing and how to avoid it, I am a newbie and all suggestions for this would be welcome.
Brown Pelican, La Jolla Cliffs
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