Osprey on Nest: Who are you Looking At?

[Ed Erkes]

D2X, 200-400 with 1.4x TC
Despite the harsh lighting, I really like this image. The only clear view to the nest resulted in sidelighting. My SB800 with Better Beamer wouldn't reach the nest and I didn't want to disturb the birds with a closer approach. I exposed the image as far to the right as I could to get better shadow detail. I was willing to sacrifice some loss of highlight detail for better shadow detail. I processed the image three ways: Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop, Fill Light in Adobe CS3 Camera Raw, and processing the image twice in Camera Raw--once for general exposure/once for shadows--and combining the images in Photoshop. The third technique gave me the best results. Shadow/Highlight gave unacceptably noisy results in the shadows.

http://members.photoportfolios.net/ederkes

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The light made it really difficult but I think it is a good decision not to disturb nesting birds. There is a halo around the chick's head and you could try to get some details in the whites using the 'highlight recovery' tool in ACR.