This guy is one of my favorite subjects, but he is very tough to get. He is a lone American White pelican that hangs out in a dinky little pond at our nearby fairgrounds. He is very shy and difficult to capture. The light seemed right and I went over to see what he was up to. To my surprise he was swimming alone and headed to the nearby bank – right toward me. I grabbed the camera and tried not to spook him. Well, I was so caught up in the moment that I forget to check all of my camera setting and just started firing away. I know how difficult birds are to expose, especially white ones and retain any detail in the feathers – but I still completely forgot to carefully check everything. When I got home and looked at the results I was horrified. Everything was over-exposed. In an attempt to salvage anything I open up the raw files and really pressed them. This popped out and it seemed perfect for this challenge. It ended up looking almost painted.
Sort of aggressive and serendipitous processing:
RAW – aggressive settings
Crop
Shadow/Highlight – aggressive again
Smart Sharpen
Levels
Brightness/Contrast
Border
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nice photo. I would have liked the crop better if the dead space above the pelican equaled the dead space below the ripples because the bird seems a bit to close to the border. 8
I think this image could be improved by not cropping to tightly above the bird - a little extra black space above it would make that part feel a little less claustrophobic.
I always like these types of shots, and this is no exception. The light on the water going across the frame in the foreground perhaps distracts slightly from the subject but overall this is an effective image.
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