Seen recently at my neighborhood lake under cloudy skies. I had to raise the brightness some and did what I could to control noise and keep the sharpness. What do y’all think? I used Imagenomic Noiseware on the water and reflection.
Canon 90D, Sigma 150-600 C
ISO 640, 1/1250s, f6.3
Any comments appreciated.
@allensparks.wildlife
Just beautiful, and the wing tip touching the water is special. I love the colors also. The noise reduction worked very well.
I’m not sure if the reflection adds anything to the image since it’s not clear. That’s personal preference though. But it’s a beautiful shot and I love the wingtip in the water.
Allen, I love the wing position of this Great Blue, and for the tip of the wing to be gracing the water is sweet. It looks like you managed the noise well. I think even though the reflection isn’t clear, it is better to include all in the image. You would definitely have part of it included just because he is flying so low that his wing is touching the water. I wonder if a touch of contrast, or saturation would give this a bit more punch. It almost seems flat, probably because of it being cloudy. Just a thought. Nice shot as presented, and I would be pleased to call it mine.
I like what you have here. I especially like the wing tip touching the water. Detail looks good . I like the color of the water. I don’t see how this would work without the reflection. I could see a bit more canvas on top an to the right.
Very nice, Allen. The reflection is excellent. I haven’t heard of that noiseware, but it looks as if it did a good job. I do think I’d favor adding some canvas on the right.
As good as it gets. The head angle, the full downstroke of the wings, and the tip that touches the water… gosh, just gorgeous. When viewing full size, I still see a bit of color noise on the neck. I have never heard of this software, is there a reason you opt for this software vs say, AI Clear? Finally, I am wondering about the crop. Is there a reason why you are opting for this crop, Allen? My intuition would be to go for a horizontal composition.
Love that wing drag and the slightly open beak. IQ looks good, and the color of the water is fantastic. Comp. is fine with me as-is. I do think the water lent a green cast to the image, and I’d go a bit further with both sharpening and NR. What do you think of the below?
Hi Adhika, I have never used Al Clear so I don’t know the trade offs but I find noiseware gives effective natural looking results even using the various defaults. I don’t run it the subject itself.
I chose the square crop because the bird still has room to move in the frame without being too small in the frame for my taste. I’ll take another look at a horizontal crop or one with a little more room in front.
@Lyle_Gruby, thanks for the rework. Can you tell me what you did? I think the original is closer to the true greens in the water but I could see playing around with it some more. Perhaps somewhere between the two.
Lots to like about this image Allen. Good sharp details, good exposure, full down turned wigs with the tips touching the water and leaving a nice trail. I think this could use a slight saturation boost or dehaze globally as it looks a little muddy/flat without much pop. Just wondering if you shot this in portrait or cropped to portrait? If you have clean water and no obstructions I’d really like to see this in landscape mode. I think color wise, something in between your original image and @Lyle_Gruby repost would be perfect.
Sure, I used a Keith Bauer trick. I opened the photo in PS, duplicated the BG layer, went to Filter–>Blur–>Average, opened a curves layer, and set a gray point using the middle eye dropper. I then deleted the duplicated BG layer. I also thought the image came out too magenta-y and decreased the opacity of the curves layer. Might better to work on the bird independently to retain the green in the water. For the sharpening/NR, I just made a rough selection of the bird, sharpened using smart sharpen (something like Amount: 85, Radius: 0.2, and Reduce Noise: 55), inverted the selection and ran PS’s NR filter on the BG.
Hi Allen
I am just going to say, this is a vary nice photograph. ( all the comments that could be made have been made). I lookup the Imagenomic Noiseware plug-in software. It give you a wide range of control over noise and sharpening.
Peter
