Quote:
Originally Posted by hotspur
Interesting collection of images,although I am afraid am not a pelican fan.
The stand out here ,for me,is the the Whistling Kite.Lovely blue sky,but plenty of lighting underneath bird to see lots of colour and detail.
Was the bird flying over sand,and the beach acting as reflector?Or was this effect bought about in CS 5 (or topaz-I think you said you use),-did you use masks? to get the bird lighter,and keep the sky a nicer darker blue?
Cheers Chris
|
I love Pelicans! I find these giant birds fascinating in all aspects; from observing a squadron of them wheeling overhead to watching how they land their oversized airframes on the beach. Their size and at times ungainly behaviour seems to fly in the face of the theory of flight. Their legs are narrow at the front aspect and wide from the side, presumably to provide a narrow leading profile for flight yet retain sufficient strength to support their crash landings. I’d seen them invert their giant bills before but I had never glimpsed the complex anatomy inside.
The kite was recorded 1/2000 sec, F5.6, ISO400 which was probably 1 stop under. It was taken around 3:00pm so the Sun was still relatively high, although reflections from Moreton Bay and the beach prevented the underwing areas from blocking up and provided quite a lot of detail to work with.
In these strongly backlit situations I find that the simple application of Shadow/Highlight in Photoshop usually produces a faint glow or aura around the outline of the bird, so I tend not to use it for these conditions.
I use Topaz Direct mainly for “micro contrast” on a separate Layer set to between 25-30% and Topaz Adjust to increase the dynamic range after masking the subject to avoid affecting the background. Again, this is usually applied on a separate Layer set to between 25-30%.
I enjoy a moderate amount of post processing, provided that I have good underlying data. It’s a bit like the magic of watching a print come up in the development tray in the darkrooms of old.
Cheers
Dennis