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Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Square Crop IV (Standard Editing)
Camera: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS
Location: Queen's Park, Heywood
Date: May 8, 2016
Aperture: 5.6
ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/500
Galleries: Black and White, Birds
Date Uploaded: May 8, 2016

 Shot within the same shoot as Quicksilver:


This time maximising the dark on light silhouette this bird is capable of; the light is behind me and the background is foliage shining in the sun. This allowed me to make the most of the relatively darker silhouette of the bird, and bring out major contrast between background and foreground.

Shot after some careful stalking and positioning in the wetland area of a local nature park, with the 100-400L IS and the 1D mark IV. Manual exposure, wide open aperture to get maximum background separation and 1/500th of a second to allow me to pan and get the eye sharp with the help of the image stabiliser, but still keep some blur in the wingtips.

Editing is a combination of a number of classic black and white processes. After initial contrast adjustment, the image was flipped horizontally and then desaturated after being filtered through a green filter, to maximise the brightness of the background and play down the plumage of the bird. Crop, dodge and burn. Finally the image was converted to duotone using a custom curve of Pantone Process Black CV for the shadows and Pantone Cool Gray 7 CV for the midtones. This gives it a subtle silky feel that makes the tonality that bit richer, and closer to the complex sheen of silver halide. Then converted back to RGB for upload, resized and sharpened.

Statistics
Place: 44 out of 67
Avg (all users): 5.4531
Avg (commenters): 7.0000
Avg (participants): 5.4750
Avg (non-participants): 5.4167
Views since voting: 539
Views during voting: 102
Votes: 64
Comments: 2
Favorites: 0

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AuthorThread
Nikon D7100
Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II
 05/21/2016 07:01:50 PM
Greetings from the Critique Club!

Wildlife is always tough to shoot and big cranky birds like herons don't take direction well :-) However a largely blown-out background with harsh whites and many somewhat flat tones in the bird itself just add up to a hard lesson in contrasts. The wingtip blur I can live with, but sadly many think that no wing blur at all is acceptable. Finally the bird is on its way out of the frame. Compare this to Quicksilver and see what makes it a more appealing pic to look at.

Meantime please continue to shoot and enter!

Susan

Message edited by author 2016-05-21 19:04:01.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
Olympus E-5
Olympus 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 Zuiko
 05/16/2016 08:52:41 PM
appropriately named, seems like a drawing, nice action capture
  Photographer found comment helpful.
Theme: Classic / Light / Dark
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