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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

Red-capped Plover

Photographed by

Mark Davidson on Thu 16th Mar, 2017 and uploaded on Fri 12th May, 2017 .

Resolution

1050x1050

Viewed

657

25587

Comment

I would like comments about the cropping, tonal adjustments and any other aspects. This is post-processed with Lightroom.

Equipment

Olympus OM-D E-M1 MkII, 300mm f/4, 1/640s, f/6.3, ISO200.

Location

Dunsborough (SW WA), Western Australia

Keywords

feeding/with prey

This image is not available for download.

Ian Wilson	2017-05-12 21:23:47	Hi Mark, You people in WA always seem to have gorgeous light. Don't be put off by anything I write, this is a good picture, what I am going to suggest is how you might make it even better. At the most basic level, the square crop is problematic; from an aesthetic point of view the square crop rarely 'works' and is best suited to only a small number of special situations. It looks like you might have a nice reflection and if that is the case, I recommend you crop to portrait to include the reflection. Don't be afraid to clone out any little bits of mud that might be a distraction after you open up the image. If you are unable to crop to portrait with a nice reflection, I would go for landscape with more room to the right. If you don't have more room in the original frame I suggest you extend the canvas to the right, in this case it will be easy to do. That brings me to the size of the bird in the frame, it is too big. You need to give it some more room left and right. This is a very common shortcoming, especially when one has captured lots of feather detail. One is naturally inclined to show it off but if the bird is too tight in the frame as a consequence, then it is pointless. As it is, you are on the limit of sharpness so it would be beneficial in this case to make the bird a bit smaller in the frame. You have preserved the warm natural light which I like but the whites are just a bit hot on the flank and the blacks on the forehead are blocked. I recommend you fine tune the black and white point to bring the bright patch on the flanks back to about 245 DN and bring the black on the forehead to about 10 DN. You can make these adjustments using the black and white point slider and adjust the shadows and highlights or you can select these areas with a soft brush and make a local adjustment. I can see some noise in the background which you should remove/reduce by selecting the background and use the LR noise reduction slider or a third-party noise reduction plug-in. There is still some noise on the bird's breast which will probably disappear if you make the bird smaller in the frame by virtue of the noise reduction consequent on the larger downsize you will use when resizing for the BLP gallery. Part of the bird's face is in shade and my preference would be to select this with a soft-edge selection tool and then increase the brightness a little bit. You might also consider doing some 'eye doctor' work to brighten the iris (but not the sun highlights). I hope this helps you improve this promising image. Cheers, Ian
Mark Davidson	2017-05-12 23:00:48	Ian, thanks for your most generous and comprehensive comments. The square crop is a requirement for submittal for the Birdlife WA 2018 calendar. I have selected this and four others for submittal in accordance with the BLWA written criteria and whilst comparing with the 2017 calendar where 50% the subject images would likely be deemed too big under the common criteria. So, I'll comply with the BLWA criteria and hopefully judges, Jiri and Marie Lochman, will look favourably upon my images. The RC Plover, and a juvenile, inhabited a small lake between our holiday house and the sea in mid-March so each morning I wandered across the quiet road and slithered my way to near the water's edge - commando style as recommended by Georgina Steytler - where the RCP seemed undeterred by my low presence. Needless to say I ponged upon returning to the house and stripped down on the back lawn rinsing out my clothes hoping they would dry for the next morning. Thanks for your whites/blacks recommendations; I'll do this and your other recommended edits in a LR duplicate. Cheers kind regards,
Glenn Pure	2017-05-31 15:54:52	I hope to contribute as much as possible to the critique gallery but have been away for a month so am playing 'catch-up'... I agree with virtually all of Ian's comments, particularly that it has been cropped a little hard. It's a mistake I frequently made early on. I still crop hard sometimes but usually only when i want part of the bird in the image or to focus on a particular detail. I also have a few extra thoughts on the lighting adjustments, notably the black and white points. Ian's comments are spot-on in that regard but this is a case where I'd be tempted to ignore the rules for the black point. I think the lost detail on the bird's forehead adds to the mood of the photo created by the low angle light. Generally, the viewer's eye is drawn to the highlights in an image so I would certainly try and fix the white point to recover more detail in the blown area towards the back of the bird. But the opposite also applies so losing some detail in the black areas, especially if in strong shadow, can sometimes work. That's probably something for the future though. It's best to master the technically correct approach first. Then when you have the control and ability to do that, it's time to start breaking rules.

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	2/283 in Critique Gallery
	4/13 by Mark Davidson
	43/170 of Red-capped Plover
	291/908 of Plovers, Dotterel and Lapwings
	10060/34428 Overall
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