Marital bliss

Gallery: AvianPosted July 21, 201462 views3 comments

Avenches, Switzerland
D300s 300 mm f2.8 ED VR2
ISO 400 1/1250 at f8 EV 0.00 WB Auto Centre weighted average
Hand-held
Raw file 16 bit original Tiff file cropped from 34.9 MB to 4.0 MB
Photoshop CS6

White storks mate for life and are relatively rare in Switzerland. Twelve or so pairs migrate each year from Africa and return to their nests in Avenches.
My mission was to photograph these birds in brilliant sunshine yet retain reasonable detail in the whites and blacks.

I recently ‘graduated’ from CS3 to CS6 and Lightroom 5. My learning curve is reasonably steep but have decided to temporarily shelve Lightroom. The original file has large amounts of noise despite being shot at ISO 400. Moderate noise reduction and sharpening
were applied to the raw file.

Your crits. and suggestions are most welcome

Comments

3 comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on July 21, 2014 at 9:28 AM

Nice job, David. Excellent detail in both the whites and blacks. I like the bit of interaction between the two.

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

Comment posted by Jim Hackley on July 21, 2014 at 1:59 PM

Very nice job of dealing with the whites in bright light and still have good feather detail. It would of been nice to see the entire bird if possible. The larger image looks good and shows a nice interaction. Nice job of getting this rare scene for your area, way to go.

Registered on September 17, 2009, 302 Posts, 5535 Comments

Comment posted by Kurt Bowman on July 22, 2014 at 9:53 PM

Nice job on the techs, but I am a little unsure about the framing. I see this is a large crop, so not sure if you have the entire bird in the original? Would be curious to see what you started with.

Registered on June 19, 2008, 1005 Posts, 8028 Comments