Advice on water brightness
I hope someone can help. I seem to find Tufted Ducks really difficult to photograph and get detail in the black areas of the bird. I therefore try to over expose by a couple of stops to bring out this detail. However, the water is then over bright. In some ways I quite like the effect but I would really value your opinion on what I should do with this. The image is a crop and I've done some work in PS.
Canon 7D, 100-400mm, AWB, f5.6, 1/800 manual mode, +2ev, ISO640
It's always an exposure challenge with black and white birds....on this one I think you went too far as the detail in the whites appears to be gone.
As for the water, you could select it and place it on a separate layer ... then adjust it the way you want and blend it back in by adjusting the layer opacity.
You could copy the entire image to a new layer, make adjustments for the water and then use a layer mask (reveal all) and "paint" over the duck with a black brush to reveal the original.
Simon, I agree with Joel - the image is overexposed and that was not a good strategy to get the blacks. It is a no-win situation when you have bright light and high dynamic range in your subject, as the camera simply can't record both peak whites and deep blacks with detail. The challenge is to find these birds very early in the morning or very late in the afternoon, when the quality of the light is more friendly to the exposure. Take a look at the ring-necked duck I posted a couple of weeks ago. That was captured very late in the day in partial shade, at one stop brighter than this image. The big difference is the quality of the light.
I like everything else about this one - good pose and composition. Love the water drops on the back.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Please visit me on the web at http://kerryperkinsphotography.com
Hi Simon, working on this month's RAW processing excercise in the Digital photography workflow forum (Ravi's image), I found that I could bring back a lot of color and detail back in the black/dark areas of the bird using the fill light slider in ACR. So I'd suggest to expose for water and whites, and bring back details in the blacks in PP. Since fill light only works on the dark parts of the image, it will not affect the brightness of the whites or the water. The shadows/highlights tool in CS5 works in a similar fashion.
Ditto the compliments on pose and composition! I just love these ducks.
Hi Simon- You are not alone in realising that birds like this are difficult to photograph! Good advice from Jerry. I often use the Fill light slider. Re. your question about water- bright water like this, which is reflecting from the sky is not easy and I try to avoid it being a BG. Sometimes you can avoid this by looking for areas of water that are made dark by trees or other veg in the BG. I have a situation like this locally, and often wait for the duck to swim into the dark water before making an image.
Posting Permissions
