White-Rumped Sandpiper

[Raybel Robles]

• NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D750
• 300.0 mm f/2.8
• ƒ/8
• 600mm
• 1/2000s
• ISO 1000
• Ray Robles
• Flash not fired
• Sun, 23 April 2017 5:52 AM
• Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 (Windows)

D750
300mm f2.8 w/ 2.0x TC (600mm)
1/2000s
f/8
ISO 1000

 

[Arthur Morris]

Lovely! Sharp with a great reflection. I'd prefer the bird back in the frame a bit.

Where? What date?

with love, artie

 

[Arthur Morris]

ps: good job on the ID -- note the orange base to the lower mandible.

 

[Roger Smith]

I just love this image. The reflection is magical

 

[John Mack]

Very nice. Love the low angle and that reflection. The composition is nice as well.

 

[Raybel Robles]

Lovely! Sharp with a great reflection. I'd prefer the bird back in the frame a bit.

Where? What date?

with love, artie

Yes, forgot to add more info, this was take in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands some time last year. Just getting around working on some old photos now. I will move the more to the right a bit more.

 

[Isaac Grant]

• Ray Robles
• Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 (Windows)

• NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D750
• 300.0 mm f/2.8
• ƒ/8
• 600mm
• 1/2000s
• ISO 1000
• Ray Robles
• Flash not fired
• Sun, 23 April 2017 5:52 AM
• Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 (Windows)

Very pretty shot here with a great color palette. The head angle is great and I like the raised foot. Now I am going to be super picky here as I think this image has a great deal of potential. On the 5k imac the face does not look tack sharp to me. I would run some selective smart sharpening on the head at maybe 60 and .3 and see if that helps. I agree with Artie re the crop and would move the bird back in the frame. The more serious issue you have here is that there is a strong yellow/orange cast to the whole shot. The whites of the bird show a good amount of yellow in them as does the rest of the shot. Plus some of the whites are quite gray. Did you have to lower the exposure to try and save this shot? Other parts of the shot are too dark on my screen. Here is a quick redo with a few global adjustments which included removing the cast, lifting exposure, raising shadows, cropping a bit to take room off of the right and adding that extra little bit of sharpening on the head. Let me know if you have specific questions.

Also for reference here is a shining example of what a perfectly sharp and accurately colored juvenile white-rump should look like. Note the white (not grayed out) whites by Arthur.
http://www.birdphotographers.net/fo...s-in-The-Mud?highlight=white-rumped+sandpiper

 

[annmpacheco]

Really lovely image Ray, and I agree w moving the White-Rumped to the right, lovely colors, POV, and the raised foot! Now onto exposure, whites, and color casts... I studied the OP with your critique Isaac and boy I just can't "find" the color casts. For clarification, I am not disagreeing with you, I'm saying I am color cast "wet behind the ears, incompetent, unexperienced, and unpracticed. How do I train my eye, any suggestions? I need to be able to identify a color cast before I begin to manipulate it... BTW super helpful Isaac, you critiqued, you reposted, and also provided a reference to Artie's "white rump", sorry couldn't resist, Artie's White-Rumped sandpiper, LOL . Once I saw Artie's image I was able to immediately see the whites properly . Back to the OP and RP, now I could see the color cast and greyed whites you spoke of... I couldn't see the difference at all when I started. Thanks.

 

[Isaac Grant]

Ann that is a very tough question to answer as I don't really know how to explain what I see. I do know that being a birder my whole life I know exactly what White-rumped Sandpipers look like. I have literally seen thousands of them over the years. I have watched them through binoculars, through my scope, I have laid down in the mud and been eye to eye with many of them over the years. I know their call, their flight style and how they act as compared to the other peeps. I have picked them out in flocks of Semipalmated Sandpipers and Least Sandpipers more times than I can remember. So that really helps when I process. But even had I not seen that many, the photo just have a sort of peach color about the whole thing to my eye. The whites are not white and the grayish brown of the bird is more of a peach color in the original post. I would say that maybe your monitor is not calibrated properly but if you can now see the difference between the shots then it can't be that. I would really encourage everyone to study the birds that they are photographing in the field and remember exactly what they look like through the camera. And not to rely on what the pics look like once loaded onto their computer. Are the whites white or yellow in the field? Did the warm light change the colors of the bird as much as they look changed on the computer? Does the warm light make the bird look yellow in the field and through the camera? In low light situations do the whites look gray or white in lower light? Do the blacks look black or gray in low light? So my very long answer is that there is not one thing that I can recommend. Knowing the birds, learning the light, learning how your sensor reacts to the light, looking at each photo and questioning the colors as seen on your monitor and how they compare to what you saw in the field. All of those things will help make sure that colors are accurate. When you look at photos by Arash you will notice that they are just perfect. The colors, the tones, the exposure, the details are all spot on. Each one better than the other. And all of those things go into producing a photo. It is much more than just nailing it in the field. Things like accurate colors and soft feather details will make or break a shot.

 

[Lorant Voros]

My favorite sandpiper. Beautiful pose and lovely setting with the water, reflection, shells and rocks. I like the OP with the new composition. Well done.

 

[Raybel Robles]

Very pretty shot here with a great color palette. The head angle is great and I like the raised foot. Now I am going to be super picky here as I think this image has a great deal of potential. On the 5k imac the face does not look tack sharp to me. I would run some selective smart sharpening on the head at maybe 60 and .3 and see if that helps. I agree with Artie re the crop and would move the bird back in the frame. The more serious issue you have here is that there is a strong yellow/orange cast to the whole shot. The whites of the bird show a good amount of yellow in them as does the rest of the shot. Plus some of the whites are quite gray. Did you have to lower the exposure to try and save this shot? Other parts of the shot are too dark on my screen. Here is a quick redo with a few global adjustments which included removing the cast, lifting exposure, raising shadows, cropping a bit to take room off of the right and adding that extra little bit of sharpening on the head. Let me know if you have specific questions.

Also for reference here is a shining example of what a perfectly sharp and accurately colored juvenile white-rump should look like. Note the white (not grayed out) whites by Arthur.
http://www.birdphotographers.net/fo...s-in-The-Mud?highlight=white-rumped+sandpiper

Great post and suggestion Isaac. I can work on the sharpness on the head and adjusting some of the grays. I don't own a 4k or 5k monitor at it had look just fine in my monitor. Not pin sharp, but sharp enough at my end.

Regarding the color cast I believe it was due to the very early morning light. The photo was taken at 5;52am when the sun was just raising. I may have just slightly increase the color cast maybe by error on PP. but not significant to make a difference. It won't feel right to correct it and make the bird match white for white etc. since this is changing the scene as when the photo was taken.

 

[Isaac Grant]

I would argue that the scene you saw was very close to what I presented in my repost. Early morning light does not really make the birds as overly saturated and have as much of a color cast as they look on computers. Sensors do that. But as I wasn’t there I couldn’t know 100%. FYI I was kneeling in the mud a few feet from Artie when he took that picture in beautiful late evening light.

 

[Raybel Robles]

• NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D750
• 300.0 mm f/2.8
• ƒ/8
• 600mm
• 1/1600s
• ISO 1000
• Ray Robles
• Flash not fired
• Mon, 17 April 2017 5:30 AM
• NIKON D750 Ver.1.01

I would argue that the scene you saw was very close to what I presented in my repost. Early morning light does not really make the birds as overly saturated and have as much of a color cast as they look on computers. Sensors do that. But as I wasn’t there I couldn’t know 100%. FYI I was kneeling in the mud a few feet from Artie when he took that picture in beautiful late evening light.

I actually think a camera does capture it close enough to what we see. The example image is a raw image of a scene from the same place with a Stilt at 5;30am. We all can tell how white and black a Stilt is and you can see from the raw (considering how flat raw is with colors) that the golden light shows perfectly fine on the bird and the overall scene here. With our own eyes this scene would had been even more golden than what the raw shows, which is what I tried to show on the photo once I start to process them if it is in this type of light and scene.

I'm going to try and find the raw from the OP photo in one of my external HD and see how it was originally. I had that .PSD file on the PC from last year and just got around to finish it today.


PS. I most point out as well, I live in the Caribbean where the sun is as full blast all year long, I don't know if that makes the orange light more orange over here?

 

[Raybel Robles]

• NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D750
• 300.0 mm f/2.8
• ƒ/8
• 600mm
• 1/1600s
• ISO 1000
• Ray Robles
• Flash not fired
• Mon, 17 April 2017 5:30 AM
• Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 (Windows)

This is how I ended up processing one of the Stilt photos from the same set of the above sample.

 

[Isaac Grant]

I think it is the opposite. Our eyes see less of the golden light and color casts than what is represented in the RAW files. I also think that your stilt was also less yellow in life than what is represented in that picture. Not sure about a difference in golden light but our early morning and late evening light is super rich as well.

 

[Raybel Robles]

I think it is the opposite. Our eyes see less of the golden light and color casts than what is represented in the RAW files. I also think that your stilt was also less yellow in life than what is represented in that picture. Not sure about a difference in golden light but our early morning and late evening light is super rich as well.

Could be yes, is all about personal preference and perception at the end!

Thanks for the feeback as always! Really appreciate it.

 

[Arthur Morris]

Yes, forgot to add more info, this was take in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands some time last year. Just getting around working on some old photos now. I will move the more to the right a bit more.

Please do check the EXIF and let me know the date. I would guess late May ...

with love, artie

 

[Arthur Morris]

I think it is the opposite. Our eyes see less of the golden light and color casts than what is represented in the RAW files. I also think that your stilt was also less yellow in life than what is represented in that picture. Not sure about a difference in golden light but our early morning and late evening light is super rich as well.

Hi Isaac, I basically disagree as there are too many variables to make a blanket statement. Those include WB, the individual camera, and the RAW conversion engine (including all the setting and sliders ...)

As I said in Ann's skimmer flight image, how to deal with warm light is a personal choice. Some want to make the WHITEs totally neutral, others like the RED/YELLOW CAST in the WHITEs with images made in butter light. Therefore, nobody is right See the same thing in m vertical skimmer image; the WHITEs are R = 242, G = 212, B = 162 and that is what I wanted ...

with love, artie

 

[Arthur Morris]

Very pretty shot here with a great color palette. The head angle is great and I like the raised foot. Now I am going to be super picky here as I think this image has a great deal of potential. On the 5k imac the face does not look tack sharp to me. I would run some selective smart sharpening on the head at maybe 60 and .3 and see if that helps. I agree with Artie re the crop and would move the bird back in the frame. The more serious issue you have here is that there is a strong yellow/orange cast to the whole shot. The whites of the bird show a good amount of yellow in them as does the rest of the shot. Plus some of the whites are quite gray. Did you have to lower the exposure to try and save this shot? Other parts of the shot are too dark on my screen. Here is a quick redo with a few global adjustments which included removing the cast, lifting exposure, raising shadows, cropping a bit to take room off of the right and adding that extra little bit of sharpening on the head. Let me know if you have specific questions.

Also for reference here is a shining example of what a perfectly sharp and accurately colored juvenile white-rump should look like. Note the white (not grayed out) whites by Arthur.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/fo...s-in-The-Mud?highlight=white-rumped+sandpiper

Thanks for the link Isaac. I like your crop. But you are missing some important points as far as the WHITEs go.

#1: in Ray's original JPG, the WHITE RGB values on the brightest WHITEs are R=252, G=237, B=214. So the WHITEs do show a RED cast as would be expected in an image created in butter light at 5:30am. At times, the very warm light may be over-powering. But in this case I agree with his decision to work with the (gorgeous) warm light. You seem to be getting a bit obsessed in recent posts with folks aiming for perfectly neutral WHITEs ... I have commented similarly at length in several recent posts (including Pane 18 of this image).

The decision to stick with the warm light or aim for perfectly neutral WHITEs (or try for something in between) belongs to the photographer alone. Therefore, there can be no right or wrong ...

#2: Assuming that the image in this pane is your cropped repost, you have gone too far with the WHITEs; as you can see, the brightest WHITEs at the top of the legs are over-exposed at 255, 254, 255. And yes, I know that you were working with a JPEG

#3: I am fine with Ray's handling of the WHITEs as he has the brightest WHITEs in the right place.

Respectfully with love, artie (on Long Island)

 

[Arthur Morris]

Really lovely image Ray, and I agree w moving the White-Rumped to the right, lovely colors, POV, and the raised foot! Now onto exposure, whites, and color casts... I studied the OP with your critique Isaac and boy I just can't "find" the color casts. For clarification, I am not disagreeing with you, I'm saying I am color cast "wet behind the ears, incompetent, unexperienced, and unpracticed. How do I train my eye, any suggestions? I need to be able to identify a color cast before I begin to manipulate it... BTW super helpful Isaac, you critiqued, you reposted, and also provided a reference to Artie's "white rump", sorry couldn't resist, Artie's White-Rumped sandpiper, LOL . Once I saw Artie's image I was able to immediately see the whites properly . Back to the OP and RP, now I could see the color cast and greyed whites you spoke of... I couldn't see the difference at all when I started. Thanks.

Hi Ann. Lots to say here (as usual). Please see my comments here in Pane 19 and my last comment on your recent flying skimmer post. There is a difference between a true color cast and an image in which the photographer has chosen to stick with golden light. It is not necessary to have perfectly neutral WHITES (242, 242, 242 for example) in each image. Therefore, the WHITEs in my juvie image were proper for that image; it was created at least two hours before sunset in relatively neutral light. Ray's image here was created just a few minutes after sunrise ...

My best advice for you is too start looking at the RGB values (not only in the WHITEs but in the sky for example ...)

with love, artie