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Inspiring and Supporting Photographers of Australian Birds

Great Pied Cormorant

Photographed by

Alan Stringer on Wed 17th Nov, 2010 and uploaded on Fri 17th Apr, 2020 .

Resolution

1772x1061

Viewed

1010

40080

Comment

Fish were seen in the shallows of a marina and a short while later the Pied Cormorant flew in. A short chase gave just enough time to get the camera up and focussed in the general area. This resulting shot is cropped with the bird and fish centred horizontally and to show the ripple vertically. I think it is slightly overexposed as I am losing a bit of feather detail on the neck and face.

Equipment

Pentax Km, Sigma 50-500mm, f/6.3 1/1500, ISO-800

Location

Mandurah, Western Australia

Keywords

feeding/with prey, adult, non-breeding plumage/features

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Glenn Pure	2020-04-18 20:01:46	Welcome Alan. I don't remember seeing you post before - but maybe it's my memory. Either way, good to see you seeking some input to improve your work. Overall, this looks pretty good to my eye. The action and moment of capture is excellent. There are a few minor technical issues, one of which you've noted, that is the blown highlights on the bird. If you've recorded this image in RAW, it's should be easy enough to recover those. If you've taken it in jpg, then you're stuck with this much as it is now. The fix the RAW, I'd drop the brightness a little but mainly move the white point to the right (brighter tones). This will recover detail but will flatten the contrast a little. In full sunlight as appears to be the case here, that shouldn't be an issue. The only other thing I'd note technically is that it looks a little noisy. This is easy to fix by applying some noise reduction. It's best done by selecting and applying this only to the background. In terms of composition, I'm not sure if this is a crop or what the original frame takes in. Ideally, I'd have a bit more above the bird and little less below it.. That's a personal choice though. Composition is a lot more subjective. Hope that helps.
Alan Stringer	2020-04-18 23:32:26	--Thanks Glenn - I have only just joined this organisation so this is my first post. I wish I had been shooting with RAW but had not even explored that at this stage. The shot is only slightly cropped - mainly from the bottom and left hand sides. I too wish I had more room above the bird. I will attempt to reduce the noise in the background - I can select the background and apply a blur tool in PS CS3 - is this how you would aproach this? Your help is greatly appreciated.
Bob Young	2020-04-19 09:04:50	Hi Alan, PS CS3 - that brings back memories, I started with PS CS2, but I am not going to rely on my memory to help you with noise reduction, I did a google search and as luck would have it, found a video on how to reduce noise in PS CS3 Extended https://layersmagazine.com/reduce-noise-in-photoshop-cs3.html. While in PS you could try to reduce the contrast and brightness as Glen suggested, but as you only have a JPEG image, you are limited in the amount of improvement you might get. Did you sharpen the image? It looks over-sharpened to me, but that could also be due to the high contrast and blown out highlights. Let us know how you get on Cheers, Bob
Alan Stringer	2020-04-19 10:35:20	--Thanks Bob, I did find the filter for noise reduction - as opposed to the blur tool and had a look at the video in your reference. I also tried a few suggestions on reducing the blown highlights - but I've lost the detail by shooting in JPEG. cheers Alan
Keith Lightbody	2020-05-08 22:58:12	Great action Alan. If you would like a good explanation of JPG vs RAW Jan Wegener has just posted a very clear and balanced summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woj-gZRszS4&mc_cid=87098a5ac9&mc_eid=826160d465 I personally take both JPG and RAW - many cameras allow you to do this - however to reduce the amount of storage required I only keep the RAW files of my best images. Cheers, Keith
Alan Stringer	2020-05-09 22:56:20	--Thanks for your comments Keith, I watched Jan's youtubes and have subscribed. I have also found some RAW photos I took whilst in Japan when I first got my Nikon D7500 - sadly I don't have any Australian shots - but I will start to edit these and become familiar with Nikon's Capture NX-D software. Cheers Alan

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	160/283 in Critique Gallery
	49/88 of Great Pied Cormorant
	222/500 of Cormorants and Shags
	18560/34414 Overall
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