American White Pelicans

[bullyfish]

Another cloudy day here but I had to go out and shoot something.

[Steve Foss]

Oh, those are SWEET! And it's easier to shoot white birds on a cloudy day than a sunny one. Flat even light makes the exposure challenge easier to handle. I like the subtle coloring of image No. 1, and the bold composition of image No. 2.

Good job.

But flat light can make it difficult to make images that snap. That becomes an exercise in post-processing.

Bully, I hope you don't mind, and you may not think what I've produced is better. In photoshop, I dropped mid range levels just a bit and bumped contrast and saturation just a bit. then I lassoed the bird's head, neck and chest and sharpened only that part of the bird just a little bit.

Here's what I got. It has more snap, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better image. Sometimes, it's more about subtlety and gauzy texture than about sharpness.

[bullyfish]

Dont mind at all Steve!!! I appreciate the C&C.

I dont shoot in RAW becuase frankly its a bit of a mystery to me still. I usually do a little sharpening, boost the color saturation a bit and thats about all I do in PP. I'm a real novice when it comes to what parts need enhancing and what does not...ie..midtones, highlights, shadows.....I usually muck around with them until I think its somewhat better than when I started. A lot to learn still and C&C is always helpful!

I still curse this lens of mine and am just bidding my time until I can grab me a Bigma.

Thanks for the comments!

[Dbl]

Nice shots Bully.

[Steve Foss]

Bully, you shot in jpeg, and jpeg did a great job of capturing what you had to work with. And I changed your jpeg in jpeg, so don't worry about RAW until you have a really big CF card, a really strong computer and a really burning desire to do a lot of post processing!