From my recent loon excursion. Most of the time you see the loons doing flaps with their wings straight out to the side, but this fellow was really stretching them back.
D300 70-300 VR f/5.6 300mm ISO 800 Handheld. They had gotten in so close that I couldn't use the 600. I always have a second body sitting on the seat for such occasions.
Post:; CS5, selective sharpening, multiply layer on breast whites, 30% crop for comp, minor water cleanup.
Head is just slightly away from plane of body to my eye, but thought it was still effective. The spray partially obscures the face and makes it look less sharp.
Great wing flap. I love the composition, and the water colors are beautiful. Bright whites and velvety blacks without clipping either. HA mentioned. I had hoped to see Loons in Maine last month, but I've heard, at least anecdotally, that there were fewer successful nesting pairs in New England this year.
The crop is appealing for the subject. The reflection of blue sky in the water adds a lot of interest to the image. Had you considered sharpening the image overall to offer more definition to the water droplets in particular?
Randy, good detail from the underwing on the near wing, and nice and sharp too. I like the raised body from the water, and theflying droplets add interest. Im ok with the dark line of the bank above, as you have levelled the image using the ripples in the lower part of the image, and that works for me.
Thanks everyone for the input, I really appreciate it. I went back and looked at the far shoreline again. I tried several versions of removing it, cloned, flipped the canvas from side to side and did various selections, gaussian blur, etc. Not quite happy. Plus I wanted to keep a hint of the shoreline and the tree because of the birch reflection in the water.
So, went into selective color, reds, removed all the magenta from the reds, did a few other minor tweaks. I did mask off all but the shoreline for these adjustments. I think this version retains the impression of the shoreline without being too distracting.
Would appreciate your impression of the revision. Lots of fun.
Hey Randy, although my initial comment on the bank was that I was fine with it, your tweaking of it does look better, and the line of the bank is still very visible. Good job with the result. Cheers.
The head turned away over-rules all :) For me at least....
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