Jim Horn, QPSA
About the Image(s)
Sony α7Riv, Sony FE 200-600 5.6-6.3 G lens, 1.4x teleconverter, 840mm, 1/2000 seconds, f/11, ISO 2000, RSS tripod, gimble.
I took this on our favorite place to walk - the Promenade, a boardwalk along the Chesapeake Bay waterfront between Concord Lighthouse and the HdG Yacht Basin in Havre de Grace, Maryland.
The fish looked more like a skateboard, and I thought of the rules of the Promenade “no skateboarding.” The head of the osprey is so bright white. After lens correction, I used curves to lower highlights, whites, cropped the image to size and then I took it into Camera Raw using the “Auto” feature and used dehaze, clarity and vibrance. I then used Topaz Sharpen AI, followed by Topaz DeNoise AI. I decided not to do anything to the fish because nothing improved it.
Please let me know if you think the water is the correct exposure or make other suggestions.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
16 comments posted
I'm glad I didn't pick the Osprey photography I had in mind for this month hahaha. Love the title for the image, very much what it looks like. I think that you are in a hard place with the water. Clearly, there is a lot of reflection in rather muted colors. I see three routes; increase yellows and oranges and brighten it up, drop blue saturation and luminance or go with both changes. It is a tough one because you don't want the osprey to blend into the background. I played around with your image for a while. I have taken a lot of osprey photos this month, and one thing I have learned is to up the color. Study the histogram and you can see how much orange, yellow and red is trapped in the image. Take a look at the my edit. Ignore the crop, it is more of an exercise in color. What I did was:
exposure +8, clarity +8, vibrance +8, saturation +14 whites +32, blacks -25, sharpness +35, noise reduction luminance +22, blue sat -70 lum -30, red hue +4 sat +25 lum +25, orange hue +4 sat +36 lum +36 yellow hue-7 sat +30 lum +30
What do you think?   Posted: 05/01/2021 08:08:00
(Groups 5 & 15)
(Groups 5 & 15)
I copied your original to see how it would come out in LR for me. Came out better than I had expected, so I did some edits just focusing on the water hue. My question is, where do you want the water and the reflection to be in terms of color? For this edit, I looked at blues. I added .4 exposure, -35 contrast, in the presence slider I dropped clarity -26, +12 vibrance and -8 luminance. In the color sliders gave blue +68 vibrance, - 8 luminance. Don't know if it is that much different than your submission or not. But, it is always worth playing around with editing to keep honing skills.   Posted: 05/11/2021 00:36:28
Good photo. You have taken the photo in such a way to show good details of the bird.
It has been a busy period for me. Sorry for the late response. I like the second image created by Steve. It highlights the bird and reduces the color impact of the background. Water looks bit blurred.   Posted: 05/13/2021 00:20:24
(Groups 5 & 15)
(Groups 5 & 15)
(Groups 47 & 53)
Sorry I did not get a picture in. between a bunch of distractions including a small surgical procedure, I just could not sit down and edit a photo. See you next month.   Posted: 05/16/2021 17:43:16
(Groups 5 & 15)
Tab   Posted: 05/24/2021 12:21:44
(Groups 5 & 15)
I provided Steve with some comments and an example on his gull image. See what you think. Did I go too far??
Tab   Posted: 05/24/2021 15:49:25