Another picture from my day at the ocean. Feeding and making friends with the crows! I liked this one because I got the ocean in the background.
Anything.
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
140mm
1/1250
f/4.8
ISO 400
Crop horizontal and adjusted shadows
Nice pose and depth of field, Vanessa. I like the setting and background. The shadowed front of the bird looks pretty starkly black. I don’t know if your software included a separate shadows control, but if it does, I’d try bringing them up a bit to give a hint of detail in the black. The eye doesn’t expect much detail in this kind of shot, but just a hint makes a big difference.
I definitely agree with Dennis on his evaluation of this image. The pose is very nice. Depth of field is superb.
Hi @Dennis_Plank and @David_Schoen ! Thanks for your input, I had adjusted shadows a little bit but was afraid to do it too much and ruin the rest of the image. So I decided to go back in and bring the shadows up 100%! And then I lowered slightly the highlights, exposure and contrast. What do you think?..
The repost is clearly better. Crows are one of the more difficult avian subjects because the plumage is so shiny in the sun and as you have seen, shadows make it really difficult to bring out plumage detail when you have bright sun on the rest of the plumage. In order to get really good . lighting on a crow, you need to be sure the sun is directly behind you or you need to shoot when it is cloudy.
@David_Schoen, I see that the underside is not as shadowed now but you don’t think it washes out the rest of the feathers?
By easing the shadows you have decreased the richness of the blacks in the image. That is why crows are so difficult to expose property. This image was taken in harsh light of late morning to mid afternoon more than likely. Early morning or late afternoon will give you better more uniform light.
I agree with David as to the difficulty of photographing crows. I think you did as much as you could do under those lighting circumstances, Vanessa. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a really good photo of a crow. The light must be just about perfect to get a good photo.
Hi Vanessa. The repost is better, though it went further than I would have suggested. Different people handle blacks in different fashions and I tend to favor fairly rich blacks and I don’t mind small areas where they’re completely blocked as I feel it looks more like the way I see them first hand. Trying to photograph crows or other black birds in the bright sun just doesn’t work well (nor does the bright sun work for most subjects for that matter). Only on those rare occasions when I’m paying for a photo tour will I try to photograph in those conditions for anything more than memory photos. Luckily, in our Pacific Northwest climate, we get plenty of overcast which works much better even though it does require using higher iso values.
