Widgeon
Background to distracting? I kind of like it, it's different but curious on your guy's opinions.
Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 40D
Lens: EF75-300mm f/4-5.6
Image Date: 2011-03-27 112
Focal Length: 300.0mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Exposure Time: 0.0006 s (1/1600)
ISO equiv: 640
Exposure Bias: +0.33 EV
Photographer: Cody Covey
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Nice photo Cody. Lots of details and clean BG. The whites on forehead though looks blown out.
See I thought it looked that way also but Histogram doesn't think so. Can histogram be wrong?
Hello Cody. Tried looking at the histogram of your photo and it looks properly exposed. I guess, the problem is with my eyes or my monitor.
I like the water drop on his bill, and don't mind the BG. But a lower angle would better show off this duck and reduce the amount of water BG.
Oh - it's "wigeon" - no "D".
Cody - although a lower perspective would make a very pleasing background, I am totally OK with the background shown. It looks like you have relatively flat light / overcast conditions which is probably why you aren't seeing a lot of shadow or highlight detail in the plumage. About the easiest way in these lighting conditions to add a bit more contrast to the plumage / make the feather detail come out is the use of fill flash - perhaps something to add to your "bag of tricks" in the future. The focus of most shots is the eye - in this case, the eye of the Wigeon is somewhat obscured in shadow and not as pronounced as I would have hoped. I might suggest a bit of dodging in the shadowed area around the eye to bring it up closer to the plumage of the rest of the head and then selectively adjusting the contrast of the eye itself so that the reflection in the eye is a little more pronounced - I think this will really help to bring the viewer's focus back to the eye.
Yeah I tried to do a curves adjustment to bring out some detail in the shadows but I couldn't get the eye to come out without creating tons of noise in the rest of the photo. I will try and do some dodging and see how that helps (never used that tool, so this should be interesting!) It was just a horrible day to be out. No light at all really. When I left my house the sun looked like it was going to at least come out a bit but by the time I got down there it was back to completely overcast haha :)Originally Posted by Jeff Dyck
I love the water Cody- very "dreamy" in the BG and nice, well-defined ripples in front of the bird. I agree you need to open up the face and eye of the bird. There are many ways to do this. Here I just used a soft Dodge tool set to Midtones and clicked a few times over the face and eye. You could also use a quickmask to select the face and then make adjustments to the selection like Levels or Curves.
Wow that is 100 times better
Thanks Cody. And you can be assured that the technique I used is the digital equivalent of what you would do in the darkroom- dodging (lightening/decreasing exposure of photographic paper under the enlarger) and burning (darkening/increasing exposure).
Try the technique yourself. I want to make sure you know how to do it.
I will be sure to as soon as I get home from work! We are busy implementing a new VOIP system at work so they would probably frown upon image editting here haha
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Well done!
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