Festive Season Dry Out

Gallery: AvianPosted January 19, 201493 views9 comments

Geneva, Switzerland
D300s 150-500mm at 500mm
ISO 250
1/640s at f8 EV 0.00 WB manual Center Weighted Average
Hand held
Original TIFF file cropped from 35M to 30.1Mb
Photoshop CS3 No sharpening

The original TIFF file had dreadful wide halos above the leading edges of this cormorant – In this shot I put into practice suggestions arising from the questions I asked relative to my post on 01/09/14. The suggestions reaped benefits – many thanks again to Richard, Phil, Nate and Dennis.

Your comments, suggestions and criticisms are most welcome.
Thanks for looking

Comments

9 comments

Comment posted by Keith Bauer on January 19, 2014 at 9:54 AM

Glad you were able to take advantage of the help from your last post dealing with the halos. For me, the first thing I see in this image is the yellow object. I would definitely clone that out to remove that distraction.

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

Comment posted by Richard Teller on January 19, 2014 at 10:30 AM

Very nice detail in the feathers of the bird. Two things to suggest in the image. It would have been nice if the cormorant had a head turn so you could get eye contact and I agree that the yellow ball is very distracting.

Registered on August 23, 2010, 1162 Posts, 6692 Comments

Comment posted by Rick Turner on January 19, 2014 at 3:41 PM

Clone the yellow float and maybe not so centered. Good detail

Registered on February 18, 2012, 534 Posts, 2755 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on January 19, 2014 at 5:12 PM

Nice composition, David. The yellow ball adds a neat focal point that plays well with the cormorant (I know I'm in a minority here). I think if you had that brilliant blue Cormorant eye showing, it would work even better.

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

Comment posted by Sharon Hallowell on January 19, 2014 at 8:10 PM

Or you could put a smiley face on it! Nice pose captured, and I like the touch of iridescence in the wings. Sharon

Registered on November 1, 2003, 392 Posts, 4810 Comments

Comment posted by Ákos Lumnitzer on January 19, 2014 at 9:15 PM

I feel the most important thing with single birds especially is to gain the viewer's eye contact, which this is not doing. The yellow float is an eye drawing object and it really distracts the overal nice tonalities in your image. I like the feather sheen on the bird for sure!

Registered on April 24, 2004, 25 Posts, 510 Comments

Comment posted by David Rowe on January 20, 2014 at 4:02 AM

Point taken, Keith, I need to engage reverse gear. I had cloned this 'mini sun' into a composition that I thought lacked interest.
Seconds later, the cormorant turned around, full frontal, eye contact but with wings folded. The result was even more mundane! However a slightly different angle also included the brightly illuminated marker buoy that you see.

Registered on December 20, 2013, 133 Posts, 286 Comments

Comment posted by Randy Runtsch on January 20, 2014 at 7:25 AM

Nice image and details of the cormorant's feathers, David. The only change that I would suggest is to crop away a bit of the open space on the left side.

Registered on October 30, 2013, 50 Posts, 445 Comments

Comment posted by David Rowe on January 20, 2014 at 11:46 AM

Bravo Dennis
There’s something about the juxtapostion of bright yellow and blue. I’m told that bright yellow is the only color that does not dilute with distance.
Unfortunately the European cormorants don’t have blue eyes. I’ll certainly keep looking out for more visitors from America!

Registered on December 20, 2013, 133 Posts, 286 Comments