Flirting Sea Birds

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hef19898

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Helle everyone,

as someone totally new to the forum, I thought that diving into the deep end of the cold water might be a good idea! Usually, I shoot landscapes and travel, wildlife only when it presents itself. Meaning I am not one to wait in a spot to wait for a bird to show up, especially when travelling my family would beat me with the tripod if I did!

Since this forum is full of great wildlife photographers, I'd really appreciate your feedback and critique on this shot:
img_20240424133409053.jpg
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Shot with a Nikon D700, ISO 200, 1/500 using an Ai-S 300 f4.5 IF-ED.

It is one shot of a small series that all turned out not too bad (my opinion), so I picked the one I looked at the longest when scrolling through them!

Greetings!
 
Welcome!

What I can offer for critique is pretty minor. On my tablet, some of the whites are just barely blown out. I think you could drag the white point left just a touch. Also I'd like to see more contrast between the right side birds neck and head, so maybe use curves to target the darker part and pull it down the smallest amount. Finally, I am not a fan of the technique of framing the subject with an unfocused dark blob. To me it pulls the eye away from the very appealing subjects. So I guess I'd try some combination of cropping and/or replacing that blobby part with clones from other parts of the background. Not easy but maybe possible in photoshop.

Appealing shot overall though.
 
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Thanks for the feedback! I'll give it a try, also the contrast for the right bird, which seems related, also good practice for my post-processing-fu.

The blobby part is the right rock in the foreground, right? I'll have to look at the other pics in the series, if there are some with a slightly different angle. I see what you mean. Not that it was a concious choice so, it was actually the only position, more or less, I had where the foreground didn't cover parts of the subjects. Well, that or some stupid touristy-selfie style attics over the 20m blow hole the bird colony lives in. I'll post some of the other shots of that lovely couple when I'm back at the laptop.

One question regarding the background, I darked that intentionally. Looking at it now, maybe a little bit too much as there actually is quite some detail of the lava rocks. Too much so, and I felt like the background became too distracting and noisy (im the non-ISO related noise).

I'll do some adjustments and upload it again in some better quality.
 
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So, I just edited (quick and dirty, usually I do not clone stuff out). You are right, without the foreground rock it looks better, I also cropped in a little bit and just slightly brightened the background. Regarding the contrast between head and body of the right bird, I am afraid that portion is already outside the focus plane, at least it seems like that to me (lesson learned: if you have a fast shutter speed full open, stop down and shoot again). I tried some slight sharpening (I use darktable, I could ask someone to run it through Topaz in a couple of days).

I tried (unsuccessfully) to pull down the whites a tad, darktable didn't complain about blown highlights so. Editing for different devices, screens and printing is weird. Another lesson learned: Edit on screen, print it and look at it on another screen larger than a smartphone!

Anyway, here it is:
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And the JPEG out of camera for comparison:

_7006376_03.jpg
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Conclusion, I like the second edit, without the foreground rock, better!
 
You could even bring the left in a lot and the right a little. And clone away that big white streak at the bottom. But hey, you have to go for what your eye tells you.
 
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That was actually more cloning than I did in total in the last two years already!

Compisitionwise, I see your point. So, next time in the field, I'll play with composition. Turned out, I use similar ones more or less all the time.

Thanks again for the critique, it was really valuable!
 
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Agree on the eye-focus. I shot it at too small an apperture to begin with, and a manual focus lense without focus peaking just adds to the challenge. I'll have to check some other shot from the sequence. When printed, it looks good so on A4.

Well, next time I know better, that's how you learn and improve! Thanks for the feedback!
 
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