I found this little one in a pond near the house and there are a few in this pond. So a future visit is planned. I used my 90D and my 100-400 at 400mm F/8 1/500 ISO 800 diffused flash. I was wanting to focus only on the head and it is cropped. I had one issue with this photo and I knew it when taken is the dead plant leaf behind the neck. So I posted a before and after to tell others what I do.
This was fixed in Photoshop. Bottom one as a example. I used the clone stamp tool soft brush and small. The idea is to remove the connecting parts next to the neck and below where the green leaf is. The gap I try for is about a 1/2 inch. Now I use the healing brush with a hard brush. The brush is very small, less than a half inch because I do not want the healing brush to grab park of the neck when removing the brown leaf. So I go all away around and fill the rest inside out. When I let go of the brush the brown leaf is gone. Some damage did occur near the edge of the bottom part of the shell so the clone stamp was used to fix it.
Dean, this is an excellent look at this turtle’s head. The details, colors and the setting all look good. At a glance, you’re clean up also looks good, but if I look carefully (since you told me to…) I can see a thin line in the shell coming in from the upper right, that was originally the edge of the grass stem. There’s also a clear curving line in the oof bits lower left, where the edge of the stem used to be and some smudging of the brown stem, lower left. If your plan is to show this at moderate resolution, these details are not likely to be noticed, but if you ever want to make a large print of show on a large monitor, these bits are more likely to be noticed. I like the bit of grass along the left edge, it makes an interesting frame and says a bit more about the location. If you’re willing to take the time, sit quietly and the turtle will move to a different (hopefully more photogenic) location. You can also reach out and remove that grass stem, but then will need to wait for maybe 10 minutes for the turtle to stick it’s head back out. That move, however, opens the door to the “don’t disturb the wildlife when photographing” dilemma.
Thanks @Mark_Seaver. I started seeing some areas on the left side but missed the right side. This should be easy enough to fix. This subject was seen from a deck I wish was a little lower so too far to reach. It actually took about 30 minutes to have the turtle move here. I said hello loudly and he started moving his head around. He was at the edge of the water as well. The lens as 5.6 at 400mm so I picked the next stop to focus only on the eye.
Dean, I love that he turned his head for you, giving you a nice side profile. You managed the lighting very well, I think. It looks natural to me. I know what you mean about having to shoot from a deck or boardwalk, and not able to get closer to the subject. Yet it is still nice that these parks and preserves are there where we can see and photograph wildlife that maybe we wouldn’t have seen at all. Maybe if you get back to shoot again, he will pose for you without the grass stem. Great look at him.
