James, I agree on the recovery of the fish's highlights - he definitely feels overexposed near the head. The bird looks nicely exposed but...he's so small in the frame that I don't feel we're seeing all the beautiful detail of his feathers as well as we should. Your image is at the correct resolution (72) but it's almost half the size (640 instead of 1020 on the long side) we'd normally view here on BPN. If this is "full frame" then I'd say you were too far away in the first place but if you cropped down then you might try recropping the image and getting the bird larger in the frame and the entire image closer to the posting guideline size. Then we'd really be able to see all those beautiful feathers and more eye contact with the bird.
Thank you Chris and Julie for your feedback, it is appreciated.
Julie, I tried to take your suggestions. In Aperture I added maximum recovery, plus I backed off the exposure just as little as well (Guess + 2/3 or + 1/3 would have been better than +1--I never even thought about the impact of the white belly of lunch!).
I cropped tighter--it is now a little over 50%. I changed the export settings to JPEG 1024 x 800, but it still was over 200KB, so I dropped it down to 900x700. What do you think?
James, I think that makes for a much stronger image. Although we don't usually recommend such a large crop I think this held up well enough for you to get away with it. It certainly brings out the presence and detail of the bird much more. Good repost!
Cormorant
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