Eider

Canon R6
f/4 400mm DO Mk2 at 800mm
f/8
1/2500
ISO 1600

I'm still spending a lot of time at the local harbour photographing the Eiders. I've never seen so many chicks, it must be a record season. This male was strutting his stuff around the females, but too late for him. The females were already looking after their chicks, and he got chased. It didn't stop him trying though. HH, ACR and PS.

Will

Hi Will, very nice, some gorgeous detail and well exposed. You don't say if this is FF or cropped, but I can see a bit more below and to the left, taking of a slightly central position. It's looking at tad pushed at the top, but a simple tweak would be to add more layering.

Graduate layer FG to darken, but exclude subject, from the top the same but lighten it. Light is darker in the FG and drifts away.

Nice one.

TFS
Steve

Hi Will,

Gorgeous looking Eider! I find they are quite spectacular birds and am really liking this one! He really looks quite the dapper man about town looking out for the ladies!

Tricky exposing for the blacks and the whites, but works really well here. And great detail!

Thanks for sharing!

Gerald

PS. No, I won't mention the football!

Hi Will ... a super cool duck species , which I ,love to see and photograph .
Lovely overall shot with the nice light and cool posing duck
Super colors in the scene and specially the subject ... nicely done . Super details and well controlled tones with this tricky species ....:5 ... albeit I am tempted to give the heads blacks a touch more depth . Framing works well .
Some artifacts showing up in the OOF areas ?!

Super shot Will and TFS Andreas

Hi Will, I would love to shoot Eiders one of these days. Perhaps next spring in Iceland.

For me, something is off. Reading other comments it seems everyone like it and while I find the pose and overall composition quite nice, there is a lot of graininess for me and some odd splotches in the upper bkg.

Curious what your process is for noise reduction? I do think there's loads of detail here but it just kind of struck me as off from your normal feel.

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated.

Hi Steve the graduated layer is good advice. I think the colour balance is my biggest issue. I keep on changing it, which does cause grain in the BG.

Hi Brian. Thanks for the critique. I hear you, I should be doing better. Maybe trying too hard and over processing. As I said to Steve, my issue seems to be the colour balance. He said to me years ago that it is so important, and he's correct. Re the NR. I have been using PS. sometimes I mix it up and use Topaz along with PS. I would use Topaz on the image before saving it as a TIFF, then use USM on the subject for final JPEG. I don't think using the 2x helps. I hope you get a chance to photograph these birds. Exposure will be difficult especially if you don't get good light, I am sure you will manage.

Will

Will, when you have a moment give me a call and let’s see if we can put a few things back in the box and get you back on the straight and narrow.

Keep it simple and don’t chop and change, that way you will have a more consistent workflow. If you are using ACR then from importing of the image use Enhance first, that’s your NR. But ISO below 1600-2000 no need unless your files are under exposed.

Looks very good to me Will, must admit I hadn't previously noted the texture in the bill before. Steve's suggestion regarding masking sounds good, it would make the image have a little more impact/presence.