Boston Islands National Park

[ajsmith]

I took the ferry out to the Boston harbor islands a few days ago. It was a typical New England summer day, hazy, hot and humid and as usual I ended up taking photos in the bright sun at noon. The sky is light and the whites are bright, but I think they came out OK. How does the exposure and composition look? C and C welcome.
I used a Canon 55-250mm lens

View of the Boston skyline from Thompson Island
f20, 1/80, iso 200, 200mm




Gull 1
f13, 1/160, iso 200, 250mm



Gull 2
f10, 1/800, iso 200, 250mm


Gull 3
f10, 1/800, iso 200, 250mm



Marsh
f20, 1/100, iso 200, 250mm

[dje]

Nice set of images Ali. The bird shots are all nice and sharp and well composed. I think you could do to apply a Levels adjustment to the harbor shot and the last shot. Try sliding the mid-tone slider to the right a bit to get more contrast. The last shot could also probably do with a bit of Highlight reduction.

Nicely done though

Dave

[davidedric]

Hi Ali,

The birds are nice and sharp, but white birds can be tricky. The highlights are blown on the breasts (look especially at Gull 1). Although it's easy to pull the highlights back, that won't recover the feather detail. The technique that Joe (jprzsbyla) showed me is to spot meter on the bird and underexpose enough to avoid the "blinkies", probably be around a stop and a half. Then, in pp, you can pull the exposure back up and now, if you avoid blowing the highlights in pp, you will still have feather detail in the correctly exposed shots. Hope this is helpful.

Dave

[DanK]

Nice. IMHO, Gull 2 and 3 are much better than gull 1 because the busy background of gull 1 distracts. The distant background and small DOF in 2 and 3 work very nicely to focus attention on the gulls. I had not noticed blown highlights, but Dave's suggestion is a good one to follow. It's an adaptation of zone metering to digital photography. In general, I am partial to spot metering with manual exposure in difficult metering situations because it gives you the level of control that Dave points to.

[ajsmith]

Dave E,

Thank you for your advice on adding more contrast using the levels and reducing the highlights in the marsh photo too. I have posted the edits below. Just those small tweaks made a huge difference in the photos. It removed the haze and made the colors really pop. I also used less sharpening on the marsh photo on the redo, I think it makes it look a littler softer.

[ajsmith]

Hi Dave,
Thanks for the info on how to use the spot meter to get the correct exposure on the whites. I love to view Joe's bird photos. I will give it a try next time.
Thank you!

[ajsmith]

Hi Dan,
Thanks for your comments. I Goggled Zone Metering and found tons of information. Thank you for the info.