Air brakes

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

... which goes to explain the water drops .

Attachment 109439

D3 300/f2.8 + TC20EIII (600mm) f/6.3 1/3200 ISO800 -0.67EV Matrix HH
About 50% crop, ACR conversion for a change, nr, near ootb color processing with Topaz Simplify & Adjust, Topaz Detail, sharpening

Before I continue I have to say that Internet Explorer wasn't color managing this image for some reason. It looked radioactive. If it still looks radioactive and you're using IE, sorry, the color managed version (now, I'm on Firefox) looks saturated but not radioactive.

Thanks for looking.

Note: still radioactive on IE. I've suspected that even though they claim to color manage that they don't. Word to the wise.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Michael,

The large crop hurts the IQ and the mage is a bit soft. Agree with the comments regarding the color, not sure what happened it is saturated, let's see what others say.

Regarding composition, maybe more rule of thirds. The HA is good and the full wing spread fills the frame well. Maybe including more habitat would have balanced the image. I like what you are trying to do here and original images are always attractive to the viewer. Keep em coming and thanks for sharing.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Michael, it looks fine to me on Firefox v10.0.2 on my Mac. I love the colors in the water and the dangling legs. The water drops are a plus for sure. Nice capture of the willet. You know I love the reduced color palette and eye contact. Very well done.

[Gordon McKechnie]

I like the bird's pose and the water colours. Works well. Perhaps a bit of lightening of the farside wing might help? As could slight darkening of the BG?

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Jeff, Kerry, Gordon,

Thanks much for the comments. Jeff, it's a little soft from the capture (focus wasn't locked) & could use a more agressive detailing pass. Agree a little more work on the composition is in order.

I'm a bit disturbed by the IE rendering... sRGB should be sRGB. Looking at some other images I've posted in the past, IE seems to juice saturated reds and blues. Not good. There are some features I like in IE and had slowly migrated back to using it after they started color managing... but now... I think it's back to Firefox. Grumble.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Cathy McEntee]

Hi Michael - I really like the suspended in mid air pose. Agree that the image could be sharper, but the light is soft and very becoming. The shade of blue of the water does't look quite natural, but perhaps the water was indeed that color? Overall nice job!

[John Chardine]

Classic Willet flight pose Michael. Colours look good here too on Mac Lion/Safari. IN fact the colours are very attractive. Love the warm light. Did you use Topaz Simplify on the subject? I would have thought this might remove some detail?

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Cathy, John,

Thanks much for commenting. The color is an, uh, interpretation. I really like the Buzz Sim setting in Topaz Simplify as a start of a workflow that may lead to an OOTB image or something just this side (ETL) of OOTB. There are adjustments in Simplify to eliminate the simplification part as was done here so it doesn't contribute to softness. Mostly the Simplify boosted saturation here... this could have been done in a number of alternate ways.

Cheers,

-Michael-