Killdeer

[arash_hazeghi]

http://www.stanford.edu/~ahazeghi/Photos/birds/kill%20deer%20bpn.jpg


50D + 400 f/5.6 1/1000sec f/8 ISO 400. Hope you like it.

Here I repost a 2nd version based on Artie's comments

http://www.stanford.edu/~ahazeghi/Photos/birds/kill%20deer%202.jpg

[Morkel Erasmus]

pin sharp Arash. the low angle makes it special - I especially like the foot lifting up in the thick mud. some noise in the tail feathers that could be cleaned up. BG colour is sweet! it seems to me the head is turned ever-so-slightly away from the 90-degree plane? it might just be the lack of sleep :)

[Lana Hays]

Arash
Nice detail.....love the mud. I'm thinking a bit of a head turn would really be nice.....but then they don't always cooperate when you really want it. It looks a tad washed out.....but I'm on a small laptop at school so I may be off base with that one. Well done.

[Daniel Cadieux]

This guy's plumage looks rather worn - tough breeding season! You got a great low angle here - but too bad that small clump of mud had to be there right in front of the legs. Pleasing water colour. Harsh light and light angle certainly weren't in your favor, and yes the HA could be slightly more towards us. A would eliminate the second (lower) catchlight.

[Harshad Barve]

Lovely pose , cool details & awesome BG ,
TFS

[Arthur Morris]

Howdy Arash,

Like the pose and the good EXP but my big concern here is that the bird looks as if it were cut out and pasted... Did you do some type of work on the bird or the BKGR that involved making a selection???

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The angle and eye contact look good. Adding to the other comments, did you run NR on the bird, there seems to be a lack of fine detail. I would also tone down the highlights.

[Stu Bowie]

Super angle, and the exposure looks good to me. I can see where the others are coming from regarding the feather detail. In some areas, it looks nice and sharp, and in others, around the neck, especially the band on the neck looked like some NR got mixed up there. Ceretainly pops from the BG well enough.

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi guys,
Thanks for your comments, I did not change or mask the BG, nor did I apply any NR on the bird, here is what the 100% crop looks like from raw. Light was actually low angle but there arr some shadows I pulled up.

http://www.stanford.edu/~ahazeghi/Photos/birds/IMG_2798.jpg

[Arthur Morris]

Hi guys, Thanks for your comments, I did not change or mask the BG, nor did I apply any NR on the bird, here is what the 100% crop looks like from raw. Light was actually low angle but there arr some shadows I pulled up.

Thanks. Did you run any NR on the BKGR? Did you sharpen the bird only or the whole image?

[arash_hazeghi]

Hi Artie,
This is what I did to the TIFF which I exported from DPP.

1) crop
2) clone out some of the mud in LRH
3) Do small shadow highlight
4) Select BG by color range, contract by 1 pixel and feather by 1 pixel, apply Gaussian blur strength 1.1
5) resize to 1024 pixels, smart sharpen (80,0.4) shadow fade amount 16
6) another round of smart sharpen (40, 0.5) shadow fade amount 0.

I was careful not to create halos around the bird but maybe I did(?)

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Arash, Ah, so you did make a selection of the BKGR. You have created a wide light halo around the bird and a thin halo right on the edge of the bird especially along the top of the head. I am not sure which operations caused the problems but I am seeing both the wide and the narrow halos. Maybe I am nuts; what are the rest of you seeing?

[Dave Phillips]

Thanks Arash,........... but I am seeing both the wide and the narrow halos. Maybe I am nuts; what are the rest of you seeing?
I see a huge lightened off color halo area extending about 1/4"+ from bird on my monitor

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks Artie,
I will reprocess the photo and post it again, it's probably from the highlight shadow as the lightened areas bleed into the darker BG. I never noticed.

Thanks again.

[Arsdel Fluesmeier]

A well detailed shot of a Killdeer. The detail is very good.
A better head turn would have been nice but one can't h ave everything,.

[arash_hazeghi]

I posted a new version with no HLS and only one pass of SSH.

[Arthur Morris]

I posted a new version with no HLS and only one pass of SSH.

Please post it here. I am not seeing the new version.... Thanks.

[arash_hazeghi]

I posted right below original one for comparison, here it is again.

http://www.stanford.edu/~ahazeghi/Photos/birds/kill%20deer%202.jpg

[Arthur Morris]

I posted right below original one for comparison, here it is again.

Neat trick! I never thought to look up. Whatever you did eliminated both halos. Way to go.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Great work Arash! As said, not ideal HA, but the mud and clean appearance overall makes this for me. :)