‘Catfish Taxi II’

‘Catfish Taxi II’
Loading gear in the boat for an evening outing when this guy swooped down and plucked this catfish out of the river not more than 30 feet from us. I managed to fire off a few shots as the event unfolded. All the manual camera settings were from earlier when shooting an Eagle fly by and were fortunately fairly close for this shot. Hand held from dock.
I felt this Image had potential so I spent far more time than usual to try and make something worth while out of it. I added canvas and cloned in the BG water in front and top eliminating the uneven shore line. The hardest part was getting the gaps between the feathers at the wing tips to have the correct appearance and cloning in the missing right wing tip. I did not straighten the way off angle of the capture because I felt the Osprey and Catfish had a nice flight path as captured. I did the standard sharpening drill to try and get better feather detail and finally realized (by the water droplets coming off the pair that I did manage to bring out) that the Osprey was soaking wet from just coming out of the river and there was no feather detail as they were all matted down and wet. I backed up and did some select sharpening and select color saturation on the Osprey’s legs and the catfish for better detail. I also lightened up the shadows a bit and this was the results. The biggest thing I learned from the time I spent on this image is what a fine line there is between just enough and too much during post processing. Thanks to Mark for this challenge, it is a good learning experience to participate in and very educational for me to see and experience the creative thinking of others and their outstanding work.

Original Image Techs
File Name Ramy_7099_CF13.CR2
Camera Model Canon EOS 7D
Shooting Date/Time 4/5/2013 2:20:05 PM
Author Michael Ramy
Copyright Notice Rock Art Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/1250
Av( Aperture Value ) 5.6
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation +1 1/3
ISO Speed 400
Auto ISO Speed OFF
Lens EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x
Focal Length 205.0mm
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Auto
AF Mode AI Servo AF
AF area select mode Automatic selection
Picture Style Standard
High ISO speed noise reduction 0:Standard
Highlight tone priority 0:Disable
Auto Lighting Optimizer 2:Strong
Peripheral illumination correction Enable
Drive Mode Low-speed continuous shooting