Hungry hungry pelican

[P-A. Fortin]

Finally had a few minutes to start looking at my photos from my trip to California, along with playing with the result of my latest spending frenzy: my brand new copy of CS5 (Your "bad" influence is to be blamed here.).

This picture was taken at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, CA, very early on the first morning, as one could tell from the lighting conditions. There was quite alot of fog on the pond, which actually gave me some trouble in PS. The toughest part was to isolate this bird since he was part of a group of about 15 pelicans swimming around.

For those wondering: yes, he did swallow this whole fish... after a 10 minutes fight. No forks or knife available I guess....

Canon 60D, 100-400mm @ 310mm yet cropped at about 80% (Yes, I'm still clumsy with my lens), f/5.6, 1/1250, ISO 400, manual exposure (Thanks to Kerry), handheld, no flash.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi P-A., nice job on this one! Good capture of the feeding behavior and nice exposure. Whites are nicely controlled and I like the warm colors. I know you are just getting started in Photoshop, and one technique you could learn is how to use the sponge tool to de-saturate the blue shadows on the back end of the bird. Maybe add a bit of sharpness to the eye as well. Well done! Good to see you have some time to work on your images now and I look forward to more good ones from you.

It was a pleasure to meet you and spend the day at Bolsa Chica, and my wife and I thank you for you gift, which we consumed on Christmas Eve.

[P-A. Fortin]

I just realized that I forgot to mention the post processing I did on this image

Added a bit of exposure and blacks in Lightroom. PS was used for sharpening (unsharpen, 30%) and noise reduction on the background.


Thanks for the hint about the sponge tool. I am currently reading the "Photoshop CS-5 for Nature Photographers" book. Alot of information in there, so it always helps to get down to some "use this to fix this" examples such as this one. I will give it a try and will post the results since it may provide some hints to other Photoshop novices here.

This is about image #10 out of 3300. I will have stuff to post here for years to come.

Glad you enjoyed the gift. Hope you figured out among the french instructions that it was better when served cold

[Kerry Perkins]

P-A., it was properly chilled to the temperature of la neige...

[gary ellwein]

Just realized I submitted this as a reply and not a new thread.

Gary

[EzhilSuresh]

Very nice action shot and well captured. I like the lighting of the bird's head/beak.

[P-A. Fortin]

Here's a repost with Kerry's suggestions. After a rough fight with the magnetic lasso, I used the sponge tool (flow 10%) to remove the blue cast in the shadows and added some sharpening (unsharpen, 50%) to the eye.

Also, this repost features the noise reduction claimed to have been performed on the original post. I realized that I applied it to the layer mask.............

Strength 3, Preserve details 10%, Color Noise 20%.

[Kerry Perkins]

Well done P-A.! You are a quick study and will do well with post processing. NR looks a lot more real...