At first light this morning. Took several photograph and had a hard time choosing the one I liked best... that resembled the birds the most as I remember them at the time of capture. I suppose choosing a favorite from the "keepers" is also a learned thing...
I saw flock of these last October/November... and I'm starting to see them again... Hope you like it. CC welcome
good profile shot. like the bit of water flicking off. Would have been nice to capture the eye a bit tilted toward you. Like the DOF on the water. Yes, choosing keepers is very hard. I have many I need to let go of, but just haven't.
Enrique, I also like the wave of water that is softly out of focus (OOF) in the background (BG). My biggest problem with this is the fact that he's turned away from you. Generally speaking the goal is to get the head angled toward you or even with the camera sensor so the viewer feels an eye to eye connection to the bird. You also have a white patch on the back of the bird that I'd bet is blown out - if not, it's very close.
Next time, wait for the bird to turn towards you and capture the images at that time. Stay low to the ground so you get an eye to eye angle and you'll find the keepers are even harder to get rid of.
Thanks Jules! I thought that the HA was OK because the face "seemed" parallel to the sensor... but maybe I am wrong..
other images with a better bird position had distracting elements in the bckgnd... but I found one that did not... is this better? I checked the highlights and none are blown out.
Last edited by Enrique Patino; 03-20-2011 at 07:28 PM.
Hi Enrique - agree with Jules critique - the OP does seem like the head is angled slightly away.
Be sure to turn your over exposure warnings on in-camera and make use of your histogram to check the exposure.
We usually only post 1 image to each thread - it's OK to post a reworked version of the same image - but not a entirely new image - you will find that you will not get many comments onthe reworked one doing it this way - best to keep it and post separately.
Keep em coming :)
Got it Lance. thanks for the clarification regarding what is customary here regarding # of images per post... will keep it in mind in the future
I have the over exposure warnings on in-camera "on" and I do make use of your histogram to check the exposure while capturing... But I have read in several places that is best to push the exposure to the right... and that it is easier to recover "information" from highlights that from shadows. And being that this is a high contrast bird, I pushed the exposure to the right... maybe too much?
I used the recovery slider in ACR to bring down the highlights in the OP and did a linear burn on the highlights... but after ACR conversion in PS which showed no "red" zones. I did check the values in the highlights before and after the linear burn and all were well under 255... what am i missing?
Good to see the repost though because of the "head angle lesson" it provides. Very nice in the repost.
Have a look at this really fascinating thread on lighting phase angle. In it the concept of the interaction of head angle and phase angle are mentioned with examples. In your first post Enrique, the sun looks to be a little to the right behind you. With the head turned slightly away, it puts the face in the shadow. Had the sun been instead to the left, at least the face would have been in light.
Both images were taken within 5 minutes of each other and within a 50 feet stretch of beach. I kept repositioning myself at to be close to the birds as possible as they (about 8 birds) walked-swam to the right of me. I think the sun was at the same position (slightly left) behind me. Some of the birds were in front of me, some might have been to the left and some to the right of me. What I like about the OP is that it shows good eye color, which is not as clear in the repost. Now, what does that say about HA and phase angle for these two shots, I am not 100% sure...
Brant at First Light
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