conkerwood

Still going for bird closeups. This is a pelican arriving for a feed at the local beachside fish market with a whole lot of his mates. They are wild birds but they are very used to people and this one happily wandered past me, almost pushing me aside in the pursuit of a dainty morsel. If you look carefully in his eye you can see the reflections of a number of his companions also looking for a free feed. Spent a lot of time fiddling with the crop for this one and ended up using the vanishing point of the golden spiral as the position for his eye as it felt balanced for me. But I am interested in what others think. All feedback welcome and feel free to edit if you wish.
Hope you like it.

Peter

nanaval Loc: Cornwall

WOW.... What a brilliant picture, looks great in the download and so very sharp. I do not think that any editing could make it better. :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: The only thing is .... wish I had taken it. :lol: :lol:

Xantoz Loc: Delaware

Peter it's a wonderful photo in many ways. I just want to enjoy the outstanding quality. The focus is tack sharp the composition is excellent. The subject matter is very cool. Love the close up of the eye. Thanks!

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

What Nanaval said! Sharpsharpsharp! Composition works really well! Brilliant color and contrast. The one thing I wonder is whether you could get away with subtly (very) brightening the reflection of the companion birds? I would not have thought to look for them had you not said they were there, but they are "icing on the cake," and it might be cool if they could be brightened just a tish so that one could see them without being prompted. :thumbup:

Nightski

Conkerwood, this is so amazingly, incredibly sharp that you could crop it to just the eye and have a whole new photo.

conkerwood

I agree that to brighten the birds just a tad would really help but there is a noise problem which gets in the way. Because the pelican feathers are so white and intense under the morning sun, and the eyeball so dark, I was pushing the dynamic range capabilities a little. I opted to keep the feathers under control and lighten up the eye in PP but the result at 100% is that there is some noticeable noise and banding on the eyeball. I reduced this with Topaz denoise but I lost a little detail, so I pulled it back which means there is some noise still there if you look carefully. Unfortunately lightening up the birds also made the noise more obvious. By now you will have gathered that I am obsessive about sharpness and I am pretty much the same way with noise. Hmmmm maybe I am just obsessive. So anyway I am going back in a couple of days to take some bracketed shots. Pelicans do hold still for a couple of seconds when they are waiting for food to come their way so if I get lucky then I may be able to get a better exposure of the eye with no motion blur so that i can layer it in. But as I said, I will have to get lucky.

Many thanks for the feedback and thanks also to naval, Xantoz and Nightski.

Peter

lighthouse Loc: No Fixed Abode

This is a great photo Peter.
Great detailed look at the smaller picture within and nice and sharp too.
Not that it needs changing at all but I could be tempted to darken it a bit to help the Canon? noise disappear from the eyeball.
I know it is probably true to colour at the moment but I think it could handle the darks and mids being a handful darker while leaving the whites where they are.

K7DJJ Loc: Spring Hill, FL

I can only say that I wish I could get one even close to this clear. Very nice

MtnMan Loc: ID

You might try cropping in even further to show just the eye. It seems to have the detail to support that.