The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This was taken under the canopy in Costa Rica. It was pretty dark. But the owl is Not accustomed to a flash so none was used. As a result, I had to shoot at ISO 5000 on my D 500, Which compared to my Sony cameras is not very good with noise.
Specific Feedback
Anything that helps me as a photographer improve my skills
Technical Details
iso 5000, 500 PF at f7.1, 400th, no flash, handheld, d500
Processed in lightroom Photoshop with help from Topaz Studio 2
A very nice capture! I think it might be successful to “select subject” and inverse it and darken the BG a bit (darkening the brightest tones most by pulling down the UR point of a curve). Then redo the subject selection (or better, paint on a quick mask with a feathered brush that doesn’t reach over to the BG) and lighten the owl a bit.
I didn’t take time to equalize the eyes or denoise.
Nice catch, David. I had the same problem with the same species in Costa Rica, though it was 2022 and a newer camera. I’ve had really good luck using DxO PureRaw on old canon files and I suspect it works as well on Nikon, though the noise doesn’t get obtrusive until I go to the largest image here. I like what @Diane_Miller did to the background, but the owl looks a bit faded out, so I’d pull the darks down and do something about the eyes. I’m finding LR to be easier to work in for that kind of thing than PS these days.
Thanks for taking a look at this, but I have a major problem with posting. This is not the image I posted, but it is one of the images that I have. I don’t know what happened, but I will replace the image with the real image. with the real image that I intended to post.
I’m having all kinds of problems with Windows 11 just finding my images. But I will get it to more detail on that issue in the future.
