Gannets

Lovely image Russ, such lovely smart birds :)
 
This really is a superb image Russ, to marks. The timing is bang on the money with that little indentation coming from the left hand birds beak. Nice sharpness and the BG keeps things nice and simple.

One minor nit is the whites on both birds on the lowest inch and a half as presented are going a bit grey. If you look at the histogram in PS ten the whites are quite a way from the right hand side of the box. I tried doing a curves adjustment layer, and pulled the triangle just below the curves dialogue box to just right of where the data in the histogram stops, and just applied that change to the bottom 1 1/2 inches of the shot. I found it made the whites look a lot more pure but didn't blow anything or lose detail.

_MG_2365RP.jpg

It would look better if you did it from your original, as it looks better in PS than once uploaded to here as a bit of the IQ has gone, but it's such a good shot, that in my opinion it's worth the effort.

Really good that we can see both eyes in the frame, thanks for sharing this one,

Mike
 
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Many thanks gents for kind responses :)
den said:
classic shot Russ...i am due a visit soon
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- wrap up well Den, it can get very windy on the cliff tops!
pooley said:
.....the whites on both birds on the lowest inch and a half as presented are going a bit grey
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- Thanks for detailed advice Mike. I was desperately trying not to blow the whites, so I made a basic adjustments using Lightroom 5. I will re-visit my original RAW image later and see if I can improve the whites in line with your thinking :)

Russ
 
Rustydon said:
- I always thought you lived life on the edge Den - not just at Bempton ;)

Russ
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Very good Russ...i always liked getting there at first light as the sun just rises, as the birds fly anti clockwise and i liked getting them flying in the golden light .
There is a certain wind direction that will have the gannets hanging in mid air as the rise to the cliff top ,i always check that before anything else .
I got told off a couple of times for going over the fence ,i tell what i did see a lot of when i did go over and get close to the edge and that was a couple of baseball caps (y)
 
den said:
Its lost on me that one Roger ,whats chumming :)
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Chucking bait into the sea Den, it's done at Bempton to attract the diving Gannets ... and of course also used elsewhere to attract Sharks!
 
Stunning! You really have captured a superb image which you should be very please do with. Well done, it's amazing to see.
 
Russ,

The repost shows much better whites in the lower half, but you've applied the changes to the entire image, and I think it's now a bit bright overall.

Apologies if this sounds like I'm nit picking here, it's not meant to come across like that, but I just think this image is so strong it just needs that final bit of polish.

Here's a screenshot of what I did. I appreciate this is photoshop and you're using lightroom (which I don't use) but I'm sure there is a similar way of doing things there using the adjustment brush to target specific areas.

russ-gannet-screenshot.jpg

If you first look in the left hand grey box, which is the curves box, you see the data on the histogram is quite a way off the right hand side, and with such white birds, this means there is a lot more detail to be had. The box shows the adjustment I made, which was dragging the tiny white triangle just below the histogram from the bottom right corner towards the left a bit, and it's now nearly touching the edge of the data. That had the effect of brightening all the image.

Next, look at the first grey box to the right of the image - the layers panel. There is a layer called 'curves 1'. In that layer is a box which is mainly black with some white at the bottom, thats the layer mask which is automatically created with a curves layer. The run in photoshop is 'white reveals, black conceals' so the white areas in this box are the only areas affected by my adjustment.

Now, you can't exactly replicate this in LR, this shows that I only targeted the lower portion of the shot, and in lightroom you could do something similar. You might be best googling this, but from memory, if you clicked on the adjustment brush, brushed over the areas you wanted to target (similar to my black and white box in the layers panel) then made an adjustment using the highlights slider, then you should end up with a similar result and keep your detail throughout.

If you look in the far right hand box, you can see the histogram now covers most of the range without anything being blown, and a full range of tones.

I hope that makes sense, just trying to finish off this excellent frame.

Mike
 
Hi Mike
I've now used the Adjustment Brush, set to +0.6ev and 75% feathering in LR5, and have painted over the lower portion of the whites in the original image - and the result is a better spread in the histogram now...

_MG_2365-2.JPG

Mike, what I do always notice is that the Jpeg image I upload each time onto TP is darker overall than the Jpeg image I produce from my RAW file on my calibrated PC monitor.

Russ
 
Rustydon said:
Hi Mike
I've now used the Adjustment Brush, set to +0.6ev and 75% feathering in LR5, and have painted over the lower portion of the whites in the original image - and the result is a better spread in the histogram now...

View attachment 65811

Mike, what I do always notice is that the Jpeg image I upload each time onto TP is darker overall than the Jpeg image I produce from my RAW file on my calibrated PC monitor.

Russ
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I've noticed that there is sometimes a shift when posting direct, but I still find it better than linking from Flickr. Don't have the technical knowledge to explain why.

This new frame has a nice tonal range - it's all very subtle, but thats what finishes things off in my opinion.

Nice work Russ

Mike
 
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