Open in Aperture 2. Crop. Boost shadows. Boost saturation and luminance of yellow channel. Raise definition. Export as full size JPEG. Open in Canon Digital Photo Professional. Convert and save (to re-size small enough to meet submission requirements).
Statistics
Place: 76 out of 138 Avg (all users): 5.6480 Avg (commenters): 6.8889 Avg (participants): 5.5493 Avg (non-participants): 5.7040 Views since voting: 788 Views during voting: 365 Votes: 196 Comments: 13 Favorites: 1 (view)
I think you may have also overdid a bit of your processing as I see a bit of halo around the bird as well.
It is important to remember (and I always have to remind myself as well!) that it is not about the difficulty of the shot, but on what is delivered. An analogy that I like to think about is that I don't want to watch a musician play something that sounds like it is difficult to play, but rather I want to watch a musician play something effortlessly (even if the piece is difficult).
Well, you're right about that. I don't like that halo either. Thanks to you and Dr. Achoo for the nice comments.
Wonderfully composed and delivered image. I think it is outstanding and can testify to the difficulty of getting a shot like this. The title is 'on the money' and this so fit the challenge perfectly.
That said, I agree with Jason's comments about the details on the bird - I think people were 'wowed' by the details that some were able to capture. I think you may have also overdid a bit of your processing as I see a bit of halo around the bird as well.
It is important to remember (and I always have to remind myself as well!) that it is not about the difficulty of the shot, but on what is delivered. An analogy that I like to think about is that I don't want to watch a musician play something that sounds like it is difficult to play, but rather I want to watch a musician play something effortlessly (even if the piece is difficult).
Overall, I think those that stopped by long enough to ponder realized what a solid shot it was (6.9 from commenters).
Don't be discouraged. I often get disappointed that a shot doesn't score higher when I realize how much went into the shot. The observer doesn't automatically realize this aspect of a shot.
Probably people were responding to the lack of "individual feather detail". Not that that is bad, but my guess is it was what people wanted to see.
I don't get it; this one really frustrates me. I think this is a freakin' awesome shot - especially the composition and given the rarity/difficulty of getting a shot like this of a bird flying sideways with the moon in the background and the sun lighting up the underside of the wings. It was really tough to get, too. I think that alone is enough to give it a significantly higher score than it got. I had to wait watching birds fly around for a long time waiting for one of them to fly near the moon. Some of the comments suggested that it might not be that sharp; but I'm not sure. I definitely didn't do an extreme crop as suggested by davidw - perhaps it was a 1/2 - 1/3 crop (which, for a 21 mp camera isn't much). Maybe 1/800 wasn't fast enough on a moving bird. Maybe I lost some resolution in the process of saving down to 300 kb from 21 mp. But it still seems pretty sharp to me. If that's their perception, though, of course I can't argue with it. They want it sharper. But I think this is a freakin' awesome shot.
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