I haven’t been getting out enough lately but Friday I headed for the coast, not sure what I would find. I was hoping for some shorebirds at low tide but it wasn’t as low as I thought it would be. About the best I could do was a few bored-looking pelicans. At least it wasn’t windy so the water was decent.
Specific Feedback Requested
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Canon R5, 100-500 + 2X at 1000mm, f/14, ISO 800, 1/1000 sec, tripod. Minimal adjustments in LR and PS. Cropped to about 50%.
A nice looking Pelican, Diane. Exposure on the white head and neck look perfect. I think there should be some fall migrants moving into your area as we’re definitely moving into fall weather up here with rain and cool temperatures (looks like highs under 60 all this week after today).
Hi Diane
Glad to heir you getting out to photograph birds. Bored or not the Pelican looks good. You have a nice reflection, eye contact and feather detail with good coloring.
Peter
Nicely done. I like the ruffled feathers - anytime a bird fluffs or shakes or does anything to get them out of the smooth, relaxed look is a bonus for me. Feathers are amazing. If you ever find Thor Hanson’s book about them, grab it, it’s terrific.
Thanks, @David_Schoen, you’re right, I shot at 0 EV but the whites were overexposed a bit and even with a linear profile the neck showed some featureless areas. Frustrating because the raw file histogram showed the right end well short of the right wall. They aren’t technically blown out – the colors samples around the brightest areas average around 240 230, 225, but definitely featureless.
I’ve posted a rework with lower exposure in the raw conversion. That brought in a little more detail in the adjacent areas and hopefully didn’t make the rest of the neck too dark. Still limits to the tonalities we can fix, especially whites.
Interesting thought – he was still enough I might have been able to do a 3-stop HDR on electronic shutter. Hope I can remember to try that if I get another chance.
I love your pelicans! They look a bit more relaxed than our tuxedoed ones. The repost has great detail and the whites look good. Subtle colours throughout the image work a treat.
I keep thinking the image may need a very slight CW rotation, but when I scroll bar the image it looks fine. And, I know how you think about levelling!
