Critique Great Crested Grebe

Very nice shots indeed - Good composition and nice subtle colour.

However, I thought at first that you had applied some noise reduction to the birds themselves as they are very smooth on close examination. Would they perhaps benefit from some Mid Contrast or similar to add detail to their plumage? Perhaps I'm being too picky.

Noise reduction is tricky on water because you can lose its quality if you make the water surface too smooth. What NR software do you use?
 
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Hi Robin. No NR done to the birds, they were selected and inverted to protect them. The water was processed for NR with the Topaz Denoise plug in filter in cs5 on the weakest preset.

Tbh, I wasn't that sold on the images, the lighting was a bit flat by the time I got there and setup. Caught me a little off guard as they usually stay towards the middle of the res and rarely venture close enough to be worthy of a shot using my 70-300. They're also heavy crops too. I'm learning about using the unsharp mask to add selective sharpening of various areas and to boost the contrast. If I manage any improvements I will post em up.

Thanks for your time. :)
 
minnnt said:
Thanks Pooley. Any suggestions for improvements?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Hi David, nice to see people wanting more crit!

To be honest, given the conditions, I don't think there is awhole lot more that could have been done. Possibly raising the colour temp a little may help as long as you don't overdo it, and maybe a touch more brightness. That's going to be down to personal taste.

Regarding improvements for a future date, Great Crested Grebes in particular respond well to being shot with early morning light. They do well with backlighting as well, so it all depends upon what angle you can get at them from. They are so ornate they just seem to thrive in this kind of light, and look good in a wider setting, so you don't always have to try and crop in too close.

Add all that together with getting them doing their weed dance, and you get a beatiful shot. Not a lot to ask is it?
 
Nothing wrong with these two shots good pos good comp , not much you can do with the light you had , looks better when you open them up in flickre
 
Lol, yeah I'll ask em if they'll 'do a liddle dance' and 'get down tonight' the next time I go. :D

Thanks for the help, I'll try and employ some of your suggestions when I get chance to.

Cheers Bri, it was odd, the light was very dull and grey but still managed some decent shutter speeds... although I did under expose by 2/3's of a second which raised it a little.
 
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