With apologies to Jim Zablotny for usurping his subjects.
David Schoen and I spent the morning at the Billy Frank Jr Nisqually NWR Friday. It was overcast with just a bit of light peeking under the clouds at times, but I was never below iso 2000, and I think David stayed even higher. We saw a nice variety of birds, but most stayed too far away for my taste. This was one of the more cooperative subjects and the light was picking up a bit at the time.
Is the angle too steep? The boardwalk at Nisqually is quite high and getting a decent angle is difficult, though I think this bird was far enough away to make it reasonable.
I accented the ripples a little bit using Topaz detail-was it too much?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Anything that strikes your fancy.
Any pertinent technical details:
7DII, Sigma 150-600 C (back from the shop) @ 600 mm, hand held, f/8, 1/400, iso 2000, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Small crop to 16.8 MP. Topaz detail on the bird to bring out feather texture and a bit of curve and saturation increase on the bird as well.
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
This is nice Dennis, a nice higher view that shows the ripple…
The only thing I might do is lighten the reflection a bit and darken the bird a tad.
Very nice HA.
Sweet light, great pose, good eye contact and simple, uncluttered comp. Dennis, this is my kind of image. The elliptical pooling and high key presentation make for a good one in my book.
All this one needs is to bump up the midtone contrast. I use TK’s luminosity masks and select Midtone1, curves adjustment layer set to soft light, and tweak opacity of the adjustment layer and it should provide you with a subtle bump up in contrast. Now I can provide you with lots of floating mats of green alga and cyanobacteria (LOL). …Jim
Overall I like the treatment of this image, but for me I would like to see it just a tad darker, might be just my old eyes! I think this would be great as a larger print. Where is this NWR? Thanks for sharing.
