SEO in flight

Gallery: AvianPosted February 11, 2013174 views11 comments

Short-eared owl in flight Samish Flats, WA, Jan 2013

Okay, second post attempt from my first SEOs and first day of trying BIF . It went way better than I expected. I'm trying to implement suggestions from my first posting:
- pick a shot with a better background to start with

- crop to decenter the subject, make more dynamic
- after lightroom went to PS to 1) selectively NR the background only, so no NR on the subject, and 2) use Andre Resch's sharpening action from the forum, which clearly does a better reduce-and-sharpen job than lightroom's resize and sharpen for screen.

Question - should I blur the background, in addition or instead of just the NR step?

D7000, Sigma 150-500 @ 500mm
1/1000, f6.3, ISO 250
handheld
cropped to 40% of full frame

Comments

11 comments

Comment posted by Richard Ditch on February 11, 2013 at 2:45 PM

This is much more satisfying than the previous owl on post shot for me. Its very good for a first time BIF shot.

At that low of an ISO I wouldn't expect any need for NR even with the large crop as long as you didn't need to do any significant boost of exposure in post processing. I personally don't try to add additional blurring to a background - I rarely think it looks natural.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments

Comment posted by Keith Bauer on February 11, 2013 at 3:00 PM

Jeff: This looks great to me. Nice positioning of the bird in the frame. I like the foreground elements to help create depth and scale. Sharpening looks very good as well. On this shot, I would not blur the background as it feels fine the way it is. Very nice image. Congrats on picking things up so fast!

Registered on November 20, 2003, 458 Posts, 4836 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on February 11, 2013 at 7:41 PM

Nice, Jeff. I like the pose and the good view of the eye. I see no reason to blur the bg more than it is already. The image does look just a bit contrasty to me.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Craig Strand on February 12, 2013 at 1:47 AM

Your having great luck with your first BIF shots. This is very appealing, love the wing positions and entire comp. Nicely done!

Registered on March 30, 2008, 416 Posts, 2885 Comments

Comment posted by Brian Gatlin on February 12, 2013 at 7:46 AM

this is really nice, Jeff. I like the wing position of the owl, and I think the comp you chose is perfectly suited for the pose. I like the bg (and the fg), and see no need for adding blur. If I were to pick nits, I would say that the red spot in the bg to the right of the bird draws my eye a bit and I might clone that out, but that's very minor. Nice job, Jeff--BIF is never easy.

Registered on March 21, 2009, 202 Posts, 4187 Comments

Comment posted by Jeff Lewis on February 12, 2013 at 2:11 PM

Thanks everyone for the helpful comments and continuing encouragement.

About BG blurring - I guess I'm just wondering how everyone gets those completely creamy, indistinct backgrounds and whether that's sometimes a photoshop adjustment. Although in this shot the background was probably about 3x further away than the owl was, so even wide open at 500mm with my lens at f6.3, the difference is just not enough to get the BG way OOF. So I tried the NR on the background, not because it really seemed to need it, just because it seemed to be a mild blur and I have no idea how to do a REAL blur in PS and not make it look horrible. Perhaps partly, as Rich said, because it just won't look natural anyway.

Dennis - looking back at my processing it looks like you're probably right, both the highlights and shadows are slightly clipped, so I didn't do something right somewhere, I'll go back and review what I did in my meandery processing

Brian - hadn't even noticed the red, thanks, I'll try to do something about it.

thanks everyone!

Registered on January 29, 2013, 9 Posts, 89 Comments

Comment posted by May Haga on February 13, 2013 at 9:26 AM

Beautiful flight shot. Congratulations.
May

Registered on February 22, 2007, 714 Posts, 8470 Comments

Comment posted by Verdon on February 13, 2013 at 1:01 PM

nice work Jeff, wish shot like is this one is in my gallery

Registered on June 10, 2011, 147 Posts, 1444 Comments

Comment posted by Howard Cheek on March 7, 2013 at 8:36 AM

I agree with Rich, "Its very good for a first time BIF shot."
I like the comp and POV a lot. The setting with its veg bottom works well too.
Some slight NR BG is all I ever do, nix the blur idea

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments

Comment posted by Martin Dunn on March 7, 2013 at 9:10 AM

Jeff, can you give me a link to the forum where I can read about Andre Resch's sharpening action? Please?

Registered on February 20, 2013, 198 Posts, 1011 Comments

Comment posted by Jeff Lewis on March 7, 2013 at 2:56 PM

Thanks, Howard

Martin - he posted about it in the Digital Imaging forum, not sure if a direct link works, but this is it, and/or you can just search for "Resch" in that forum and find it - "Web Sharpener v0.7"
post: http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=69278&CGISESSID=dd77d36ef67d8db44b2021134f7e7529&u=8718

link to his blog for it: http://www.andreasresch.at/blog/
and it looks like he has a v0.8 now as well.

Registered on January 29, 2013, 9 Posts, 89 Comments