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Thread: Egret at Sunset II

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    Default Egret at Sunset II

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    The sunset depicted here and in my previous Egret at Sunset* came at the end of a long day; I'd spent the previous night on the overnight train from Shanghai to Nanchang. After hours of unchanging, bright afternoon light, at sundown time is suddenly compressed; the pressure's on to wake up and do well. This shot was taken just four minutes before my first Egret at Sunset, but as you can see, the situation is much different. In the four minutes between the shots, the sun, still peeking above the treetops here, had already melted into the branches. What's more, this is an intermediate egret, not a great white egret, and the bird is flying away from the sun, not toward it. I chose this pano crop so as to give the egret something to fly into; I want you to have the sensation of depth, with the sun in the far BG, the bird in the midground, and the orange to the right in the "foreground." I want you to feel the egret moving toward you.

    Device: Nikon D3S
    Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
    Focal Length: 600mm
    Aperture: F/4
    Shutter Speed: 1/8000
    Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
    Exposure Comp.: none
    ISO Sensitivity: ISO 200
    Subject Distance: about 63 m
    Photoshoppery: Using content-aware fill, I cleaned out the bare branch that the bird in my first Egret at Sunset is about to land on. In this shot, that bare branch is just clutter. I made sure that my bird was totally black by copying the image, pasting it as a new layer, then brightening the layer radically so that all the non-blacked-out parts showed up. I then painted black all the non-blacked-out parts, applying the changes to the original layer.

    * http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...set?highlight=

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    excellent image Craig, love the colors and compo
    TFS

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    Very nice...prefer it to the last one. I like the pano crop. Very nice

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    Yeap, very nice. I also prefer it to the first and like the pano crop.

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    Forum Participant Joe Senzatimore's Avatar
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    I love silhouettes and this is a fine image. I just find the setting sun so bright that my eye keps going to that spot and not where it should be. Tough to find a good solution for this. :2

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    Quote Originally Posted by Joe Senzatimore View Post
    I love silhouettes and this is a fine image. I just find the setting sun so bright that my eye keps going to that spot and not where it should be. Tough to find a good solution for this. :2
    The one way around it is to cut the sun out completely, and this I've done; the result is a powerful but more abstract image. Well, instead of talking about it, why don't I just show you? See below.

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    I like both, especially the pano COMP. At times in situations like this you might be able to shoot a much dark sun as source material... If you expose the image with the bird for the sun you get a black sky and no SILH :).
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    Ofer Levy
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    I like this and prefer the original post.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Arthur Morris View Post
    I like both, especially the pano COMP. At times in situations like this you might be able to shoot a much dark sun as source material... If you expose the image with the bird for the sun you get a black sky and no SILH :).
    Thanks, Artie. Let me see whether I'm following you. I'd shoot a few darker suns, but not too dark, because we don't want to stretch reality too much; then shoot the egret as I've shot him here. Then I'd layer the egret into one of the shots of the darker suns, or layer the sun into the egret shot. In any case, your advice to shoot source material is well worth noting, and I have in fact been shooting source material in other situations.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Craig Brelsford View Post
    Thanks, Artie. Let me see whether I'm following you. I'd shoot a few darker suns, but not too dark, because we don't want to stretch reality too much; then shoot the egret as I've shot him here. Then I'd layer the egret into one of the shots of the darker suns, or layer the sun into the egret shot. In any case, your advice to shoot source material is well worth noting, and I have in fact been shooting source material in other situations.
    You've got it backwards. You make images with the birds first. If you see a great one, it is likely that the sun will be 8-10 stops over at least. You need to stop right then, set a really dark manual exposure, and create a few images of the sun with no or few blinking areas. Note: that might require 1/8000 sec. at your smallest aperture at ISO 50 in some cases. Then, bringing the dark sun into the good bird image that is properly exposed for the sky will be difficult and challenging at best but always worth a try. With your image you would have the tree in the sun to contend with making things even harder.... Anyway, now you should have the concept down. It's the execution that is the problem.
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    Super Moderator Daniel Cadieux's Avatar
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    Absolutely fabulous Craig!! I love the chosen pano crop, and the overall mood is very nice. I'm OK with the sun as is, but trying a version with a darker one is a good option to try. Not sure if it works for you, but here I selected one of the palest yellows found on the iner contour of the sun, and the "Paint bucket tool" nicely filled in the sun's whites.

    P.S. I also converted your image to sRGB for web posting, so if some people see more vibrant colours now (as you intended us to see) that is why

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    Quote Originally Posted by Arthur Morris View Post
    . . . Anyway, now you should have the concept down. It's the execution that is the problem.
    Indeed. Of course one can also make an attempt at a cooler sun in the "lab." I tried that, I tried fitting in a less brilliant sun, but just as you said, Artie, the branches in the tree made the merger very clunky. In fact it may be well nigh impossible to get it right when dealing with much less than a pure sun. I'd like to see some examples of how you or someone else solved this problem. Thanks.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Craig Brelsford View Post
    Indeed. Of course one can also make an attempt at a cooler sun in the "lab." I tried that, I tried fitting in a less brilliant sun, but just as you said, Artie, the branches in the tree made the merger very clunky. In fact it may be well nigh impossible to get it right when dealing with much less than a pure sun. I'd like to see some examples of how you or someone else solved this problem. Thanks.
    The sun in your orginal post is over-exposed. Making it cooler will not change that. There is no info in the pixels.... Nothing to recover either.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel Cadieux View Post
    Absolutely fabulous Craig!! I love the chosen pano crop, and the overall mood is very nice. I'm OK with the sun as is, but trying a version with a darker one is a good option to try. Not sure if it works for you, but here I selected one of the palest yellows found on the iner contour of the sun, and the "Paint bucket tool" nicely filled in the sun's whites.

    P.S. I also converted your image to sRGB for web posting, so if some people see more vibrant colours now (as you intended us to see) that is why
    Thanks, Daniel! I don't see a big difference on my monitor as a result of sRGB. But I'd be interested to know why you converted it and what the virtues of sRGB are. The new, buttery sun is less real, less harsh, and possibly more pleasing to the eye; I'm still letting the new sun sink in; I'll be interested to hear what others think. Daniel, where is the paint bucket tool in Photoshop? How exactly does it work?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Arthur Morris View Post
    The sun in your orginal post is over-exposed. Making it cooler will not change that. There is no info in the pixels.... Nothing to recover either.
    Artie, you're absolutely right. I remember now; when I brought up a copy of the first egret shot and started playing with the sun, the sun itself wasn't changing; only the branches were.

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    Thanks Craig, Those are my favorite words.
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    Ofer Levy
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    I like Danil's repost in Pan#11 as the sun is a bit dominant in the original and more pleasing in the repost. sRGB is the colour space you should use when presenting images on the web. Some browsers (like mine) show images with ADOBE RGB 1998 colour sapce - flat with dull colours compared to sRGB.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ofer Levy View Post
    I like Danil's repost in Pan#11 as the sun is a bit dominant in the original and more pleasing in the repost. sRGB is the colour space you should use when presenting images on the web. Some browsers (like mine) show images with ADOBE RGB 1998 colour sapce - flat with dull colours compared to sRGB.
    Hi Ofer, which browser do you use? I'm using Safari on my iPhone right now and see now difference in the colors of Daniel's sRGB repost and those of my original in Adobe RGB 1998. I use Firefox 5.0 on my PC and also saw no difference.

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    Super Moderator Daniel Cadieux's Avatar
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    Craig, you will not see any difference from the PC you used to process your image, and I believe Firefox is color managed (IE is NOT)...but most others will not see the colors you want them to see if you do not convert to sRGB (as you saw on your iPhone).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel Cadieux View Post
    . . . (as you saw on your iPhone).
    Excuse me, Daniel, I wrote "see now difference" but meant to say "no" difference.

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    Craig, another great silhouette, and your comp is nicely balanced between sun and egret. I like how the sun is nestled in the tree, together with the overall yellows of the sky. An opportunity well used.

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