Swan

[JPS]

I've been watching some of the bird threads and wanted to try some myself. Not as easy as I thought.

C&C welcome and badly needed.
Regards
John

[Geoff F]

The first 'swan' looks a bit 'strange' John?

Possibly it is a little softer than the water? A common problem where auto focus prefers to focus on a 'harder' ripple than a soft edged bird. And there is some fringing around the head. But only when viewed at full screen size.

None of this is of major concern though; and white birds are so tricky to photograph perfectly, particularly when they are in darker water.

The swan looks OK but I get a little confused over its rather grey body/neck against the brighter head.

But the focus is fine, and from a rather difficult angle. The light must have made exposure difficult between the white bird and a mixture of water colour.

Certainly an interesting pose.

[jprzybyla]

Hello John, I would say good work for your beginning especially because you chose one of the most difficult colors to expose correctly... white. To me both appear slightly underexposed. In the first image there is a hot spot on the top back of the head and neck of the duck. If I were post processing I would use the Adjustment Brush in Adobe Lightroom set to Burn (darken) to tone down that area to match the rest of the bird. Then I would slightly raise the exposure of the image being careful to not overexpose the whites. The third image it appears the bird is a whitish grey judging from the colors on the head and bill. I think that just need to be lightened by raising the exposure.