Merganser meets Gull

[Cantab]

After taking photos of a group of common mergansers sleeping on the water, I saw a solitary duck that was sleeping on a rock -- but not for long. A gull decided that the merganser should move along:


#1 Leave me alone!


#2 Go away!


#3 Perhaps the gull will go away and I can go back to sleep.


#4 On second thought, maybe I'd better leave.


#5 A short flight

I did basic processing and cropping in Lightroom 4, which I'm still getting used to. Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated.

[davidedric]

Hi Bruce,

That is a great behaviour sequence - don't see enough of them, well done!

So far as C&C is concerned, I think the the thing that first strikes is that the highlights are very blown. You can pull back those in Lightroom using the Highlights slider, but you can't get back the feather detail. With white birds, it's best to under expose by 1 to 2 stops to get rid of the "blinkies" (the clipped highlight areas) and then manage the exposure back in Lightroom (Joe, jprzsbyla, is the expert on this).

Personally, I would also have cropped more tightly to focus on the action.

Cheers,

Dave

[Cantab]

Dave, thank you for your comments. When I was doing the photos in Lightroom I noted that parts of the white feathers were clipped but didn't do anything about it. So I'll go back and have a go at pulling them back as you suggest.

I was of two minds about the cropping. The photos were taken with a 100-400 zoom at 400mm; although the posted versions were cropped somewhat, there should be enough resolution for more cropping.

[Cantab]

I've reworked a couple of the photos, hopefully following Dave's suggestions.

For the first two I reduced the explosure slightly and pulled back on the highlights then did a closer crop:




I then moved the full size photos to Photoshop and added some local contrast enhancement and then some output sharpening on the downsized file:




Has the local contrast enhancement pushed things over the top?

[jeeperman]

Good series, Bruce. I like the second image best. It tells the story and can stand on its own.

[davidedric]

Hi again,

I think you have done a good job here - these images grab my attention more. I think your instincts are right: the extra lce doesn't add anything for me. I prefer the first two.

Dave

[Cantab]

Paul and Dave, many thanks for your comments.