Put a glow on whole scene…and brought up shadows on the backlit birds. Almost wonder if I should have left the birds in near silhouette, and skipped the glow?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
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Sony A7R4, Metabones IV Smart Adaptor/Canon 24-70mm F/2.8 lens… 1/80 sec @ f/18, focal length 61mm, ISO 320, handheld.
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dougbluntphotos
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Doug, this is a fabulous photo. The compostion and colors are equisite! Well done. One minor nit: my preference would be to slightly decrease the orange saturation.
I like this peaceful scene with the glowing sky, waves, and the interesting birds. The birds appear rather noisy in the largest image. May want to run a slight amount of noise reduction, back off sharpening, etc. Nice image.
I like the glow effect, Doug, and the Willets look fine to me at this exposure, though I suspect they’d look good darker as well. The one think I noticed is that when you brought the Willets up in exposure you got a slight bright fringe above the backs of the two left birds. If you zoom in enough, it should be an easy fix. I really like this as a birdscape. Very well composed.
All great and legitimate commentary. The birds were pretty dark, and perhaps it would have been better to leave them alone. I also think I should have kept the glow off the birds. Live n Learn
Hi Doug. It’s a lovely image; very peaceful and I can almost hear the waves. I appreciate the softness of the foreground colors, the sea green and especially the orange glow from the sunset on them. They very much contribute to the atmosphere that matches the peaceful feeling of the birds at the water’s edge. I do think the orange sunset is a little thicker than the rest of the colors, a little more saturated, in a way that maybe is a tiny bit jarring. I think the hue itself is an interesting contrast to the sea green and I like that quite a bit. I also like the positioning of the birds- the photograph reads very well as a story with them so far in the foreground, and with such interesting contrasts in color in the middle and background.
Thanks a lot, Drew! On the A7R4, I’ve only had it out a couple times. But I immediately liked how it felt and sounded. It’s got the coolest shutter sound…so whisper quiet. I also noticed it is super-fast on fps! I tend to do a lot of scaling and cropping, so it’s really nice in post to have 61 mp. I think once I figure out how to get the lighting-fast autofocus working perfectly, it’s going to be a huge boost in my bird photography. I also like the fact that there are “3” memories on the mode dial…so I can, with the turn of the wheel, go to landscape settings…and another turn its bird settings, and finally, #3 will be night photography. Saves loads of time, it appears, and will be nice in the field. All in all, I’m really glad I got one.
