Osprey in flight

[Randy Rimland]

from Lake Norman NC last week

[RakeshDhareshwar]

Great image you have got here . The wing spread and the eye contact look good . The image can go brighter . I did some curves adjustment and here is the result .

[Jeff Dyck]

Great pose you've captured Randy. I think Rakesh's repost is an improvement.

[Randy Rimland]

thx guys

i noticed the right curve could come over some but i personally prefer the original as it shows more feather contrast

[Kerry Perkins]

Randy, this is a super capture and only needs some minor tweaks to go from good to great. Contrast is not your friend in bird photography! It is a fact with digital that 50% of the detail is contained in the upper 20% of the histogram. When you expose to the right, you are putting as much detail as possible in your image. Contrast actually robs your image of detail and it is best to bring it down in the RAW state, if that is how you shoot.

I added some light and color to the image and toned down the blown highlights on the right shoulder. Also ran a very light pass of USM. It would be helpful if you would post your technical info so we can make more specific suggestions.

[Randy Rimland]

Randy, this is a super capture and only needs some minor tweaks to go from good to great. Contrast is not your friend in bird photography! It is a fact with digital that 50% of the detail is contained in the upper 20% of the histogram. When you expose to the right, you are putting as much detail as possible in your image. Contrast actually robs your image of detail and it is best to bring it down in the RAW state, if that is how you shoot.

I added some light and color to the image and toned down the blown highlights on the right shoulder. Also ran a very light pass of USM. It would be helpful if you would post your technical info so we can make more specific suggestions.

thanks Kerry....the exif is attached and I am used to using exif viewers to see it so I didn't post it but I will start posting it when I post pics here.
I did shoot this in raw and here is the info:
d700,300vr+1.4tc,iso800,f/7.1,1/4000

how speciically did you add light and color ? What software did you use to do it ? How did you tone down the blown highlights ? and what did you use for USM ?
I'd be happy to send you the NEF if you'd like to PP the original.

and thanks for the time you spent and help on this

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Randy, sorry for leaving out the details - here's the scoop...

I used Photoshop CS5 for all the changes. For toning down the highlights, I used the "sponge" tool set to "desaturate" and opacity at about 10% - just brushed over those hot spots. I find that this works better than the burn tool sometimes and doesn't give you that ugly gray look that you get when reducing just the luminance level. To add light in the range that I thought would help the most I used a levels adjustment, bringing the center slider just a tad to the left, which boosts the mid-tones only. For color, I am a huge fan of using hue/saturation and adjusting each color individually. In this case I think I boosted the reds, yellows, and blues a bit. IMO, this is one of the most powerful tools in Photoshop and can really make a difference in your images. For sharpening I just used the unsharp mask, with the settings of 64-0.3-0. All it needed was just a touch more and that seemed to do the trick.

Thanks for adding your tech settings, there are very solid! You only had a few pixels that were over and this was a very well done capture!

[Randy Rimland]

Hi Randy, sorry for leaving out the details - here's the scoop...

I used Photoshop CS5 for all the changes. For toning down the highlights, I used the "sponge" tool set to "desaturate" and opacity at about 10% - just brushed over those hot spots. I find that this works better than the burn tool sometimes and doesn't give you that ugly gray look that you get when reducing just the luminance level. To add light in the range that I thought would help the most I used a levels adjustment, bringing the center slider just a tad to the left, which boosts the mid-tones only. For color, I am a huge fan of using hue/saturation and adjusting each color individually. In this case I think I boosted the reds, yellows, and blues a bit. IMO, this is one of the most powerful tools in Photoshop and can really make a difference in your images. For sharpening I just used the unsharp mask, with the settings of 64-0.3-0. All it needed was just a touch more and that seemed to do the trick.

Thanks for adding your tech settings, there are very solid! You only had a few pixels that were over and this was a very well done capture!

WOW great detail on the PP, thanks Kerry
I like this forum alot already

[John Chardine]

Randy- Congratulations on this great capture. Fantastic wing angle and eye contact. And the primaries are almost perfect on this bird giving it a really clean look. Kerry- I don't see any blown highlights in the original post. Rakesh's repost is a bit brighter but these don't seem blown either using the Digital Colormeter. I like Kerry's subtle pass of USM which really brings up the image even further. This is a wall-hanger!

[Kerry Perkins]

John, you are correct, my mistake. I was reacting to the lack of detail there and used the wrong words.

[John Chardine]

John, you are correct, my mistake. I was reacting to the lack of detail there and used the wrong words.

Kerry- But that's a great segue to a point I've made several times in different places here on BPN, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. Areas of bright tonality in an image can have the appearance of being blown because of lack of detail rather than the pixels being at level 255. Conversely, so long as there is detail, a few blown pixels don't matter that much. To put it another way, it's the spatial arrangement of bright pixels that is crucial. If you intersperse a few blown pixels amongst pixels of varying tonalities < 255, the detail will be obvious and the blown pixels become part of the detail. On the other hand, if you have patches of the image with similar tonality but bright, say level 240-245, it will give the appearance of being blown.

Here's a good example of an image where a few blown pixels (in the red channel) do not detract from the image IMO.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...read.php/82900

[Steven Kersting]

I personally expect highlights to be "blown" and somewhat lacking in detail...That's how they appear when viewed in reality...By blown, I mean "white" at about 245. I don't expect them to be clipped. (even though that might also be "reality")

To me, the reposts are pretty much interchangeable. Both improve on the OP underexposure.

As for the photo, GREAT SHOT! A capture like this is rather rare.

[Kerry Perkins]

Steve, I agree. The important thing about this thread is the great capture by Randy!