This is a shot at a local park of a Wigeon using z9 and z 800mm pf. Any suggestions for improvement would be appreciated.
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WIGEON
- Thread starter wotan1
- Start date
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I like the photo, interesting colorful Wigeon.
Is the out of focus area behind rendered by the lens or did you help it some in edit?
Is the out of focus area behind rendered by the lens or did you help it some in edit?
Out of focus areas were all rendered by the lens,, no alteration of focus in post.
I like it overall. I agree the oof areas catch my eye and distract a bit from the subject. Was there some ai noise reduction? I ask because the background water becomes the subject to my eye. Maybe a little cropping? Also I wish there was the full reflection, that would be cool. I think you may have missed the eye a smidgen, to me the sharpest part is the body, but it is close. I like the exposure and how you handled the colors.
Turberticus
Well-known member
Looks good but the background would improve significantly if you got lower. I'm a huge proponent of this for waterfowl photography. I realize that's not always possible, but it would essentially place the far shore or horizon as your background behind your subject, which of course would be significantly more out of focus and less distracting than the water right behind the duck.
Krish
Active member
Birds on the water usually look best at eye level. If that was not possible try cropping the top and increasing the area below the bird (gen fill) to artificially make a "low in the water" impression. The bird should be in the top 1/3rd of the pic
Elbert
Active member
I like the image but agree with the comments about the background others have made. The OOF areas draw attention to them. A couple of things I might do with this image (in lightroom, I don't know what software you use): Pull back the highlights a little bit, the light area on to of the duck's head has lost detail. Apply some noise reduction and then you might want to make a mask for the duck (select subject in lightroom) and increase saturation a bit. Then create a reverse copy of that mask and reduce exposure a little bit for that mask, that will make the surrrounding area darker and draw less attention. Maybe also reduce texture and sharpening in that mask, but that's tricky sometimes things start to look really artificial.