Black-bellied Whistling Ducks In Flight...

[jprzybyla]

The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks are back in the marsh. They showed up this week and were flying in the early morning. C&C welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

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[redrew]

Very well done Joe. For me there is nothing more difficult than getting a good photograph of a duck in flight, but you did.
A very interesting and different duck specie that acts more like a goose but roosts in trees.

[Bobobird]

Really well done. Excellent exposure and excellent everything else.

I have a recurring problem with the undersides coming up underexposed especially when shooting against a bright sky. Any suggestions?

[ANSORB]

Really well done. Excellent exposure and excellent everything else.

I have a recurring problem with the undersides coming up underexposed especially when shooting against a bright sky. Any suggestions?

Selecting the shadows and applying a curve should help. A way which I had completely missed - until yesterday! - is to use the Colour Range command which allows you set highlights, midtones or shadows as well as colours. Seems to work quite well.

[Bobobird]

Thanks John, appreciated.

The colour range command has its uses and I sometimes use it for noise reduction. Never crossed my mind about other uses. Thanks.

[Dave Humphries]

Really well done. Excellent exposure and excellent everything else.

I have a recurring problem with the undersides coming up underexposed especially when shooting against a bright sky. Any suggestions?

Yes I know the problem

Suggesting trying to shoot them flying over something pale (so the sunlit reflects up and helps 'fill' the shadows) has limited applicability and is more akin to 'getting lucky' at certain times of the year when snow or sun bleached grasses are more prevalent, or the sun angle is just right for a reflection, although they need to be quite low.

Other than that handle in PP as John suggests, but I have not heard the term "Colour Range" before, where's that?

[jprzybyla]

Very well done Joe. For me there is nothing more difficult than getting a good photograph of a duck in flight, but you did.
A very interesting and different duck specie that acts more like a goose but roosts in trees.

Thanks Rollin, I appreciate your comment and opinion. You are so correct that this is a wierd duck. It whistles instead of quacking, it is as comfortable roosting in trees as being on the water, and it seems to like being in groups with others. Right now they are unique to this one area in Florida but spreading out.

[jprzybyla]

Thanks Bobo, John, and Dave for your comments and viewing my images. Shadows on the underside of the wings of birds is a problem in some species. White birds no so much, they reflect a lot of light and the underside of the wings is white. Raptors are kind of in the middle having browns, greys and white mixed on the underside of the wings. This duck is particularly difficult because the underside is mostly black like the belly. I could open the shadows so it is almost like a HDR image but then there is the noise to deal with (which is very strong because of the blackness and lack of signal). Lightroom 4 has good tools to deal with the shadows. A Tone Curve as John mentioned that allows correcting rages of tones...shadows, darks, lights, and hightlights. It also has a true point curve for RBG, also the Red Channel, Blue Channel and Green Channel. That said I prefer to use the Adjustment Brush with the Auto Mask set to on. With this tool you can work on specific areas of the image without affecting the whole image. With this tool you can make changes to...temperature, tint, exposure, contrast, hightlights, shadows, clarity, saturation, sharpness, moire, noise, and defringe. These changes are only applied locally to areas that you paint over and mask. The mask snaps to whatever particular tone or area by tone you are working on. So anyways, all that being said...I try to open the shadows to show some detail but not enough so that there is a blotchy, grainy mess to deal with. I hope this helps, it what works for me. I think Adobe Lightroom 4 is the best product Adobe has made for photographers as it zeros in on what photographers do and need. Thanks all for viewing and commenting.