Gosh, Bill, is that a perfect pose or what? Great wingspread and angle - you can see almost every detail of the entire bird. I even love the way the tail is flapping against the water behind him!
I don't mind the water drops at the bottom of the body but the ones on the head are so small that I'd consider cloning some/all of them to get the head to look less "spotty"...but if it looks good in print then I'd leave them alone.
Great timing...nice detail. If anything needed it may be a tad more room on the left. I looked up info on the Dike and it looks like an interesting place to shoot. How is the bird variety most of the time? Are crowds a problem?
Love the wing position and HA of this one. Wings look a little noisey to me, did you have to lighten them selectively and thats why the appear to have noise while the bg looks fine?
Appreciate the comments. William; the dike is indeed an interesting place to shoot. The bird variety is somewhat limited, but the convenience of being able to drive 5 miles to the center of Galveston Bay, park anywhere, and shoot from your vehicle if you want to is pretty nice. It is excellent (IMO) for brown pelicans, white pelicans in winter, terns (especially in breeding season like now), gulls, cormorants, and American Oytercatchers. There is a scattering of other bird as well. Crowds can be a problem on weekends.
Cody; digital noise occurs almost completely in dark parts of an image, so even at high ISOs light areas of an image will show very little noise. Pushing exposure (exposing to the right which lightens up the image) allows the avoidance of dark parts in an image ( and thus noise) by overexposing and exposure is corrected in post-processing.
With dark colored subjects noise can be a serious problem, and it only gets worse as the ISO is increased. The general rule is keep the ISO as low as possible., . Here, with overcast skys and a high shutter-speed and good DOF needed, ISO 1600 was called for, which is moderately high. With this image the exposure was pushed at least 2 stops, to the point highlight clipping was occuring, and although digital noise was well controlled at ISO 1600, some still remained. Noise reduction always reduces detail since it smooths things out, so I tend to be conservative in its use. To me a little noise is better to have than the reduction of detail caused bt NR. regards~Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 04-12-2011 at 01:57 AM.
Nice, full-flaps-down wing position Bill. I would be very happy with this "pose". Good comments above. I see the noise. I think the effect could be reduced by darkening the bird a little. I tried this with the middle slider in Levels and it could be done without losing detail in the shadows.
Neotropic Cormorant Landing
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