Crested Crane (A Picture I Am Kind Of Proud Of)

sabbath999 · Jan 30, 2009

EXIF: D300, 55-200 VR, 1/250, f/4.8, ISO400, 116mm

OK... a decent but certainly not spectacular picture of a crested crane with a couple of obvious technical flaws... so why on earth would I be kind of proud of this one.

BECAUSE I shot it through THIS:

This critter is in the Hilo Zoo, which means it is in a rainforest. All of the cages are absolutely covered in muck from all the rain. It looks like rust but it isn't, it's actually a brown moss. That cage slits are about half an inch thick, and the lens I was using only opens to f/4.8.

OK, I did a LOT of PP on this one (at least for me... since I don't normally do much of any PP on my critter shots). The beast was completely backlit as you can tell from its crest, and to expose the face I had to entirely blow out the back... it was completely white on top...

Another problem is that this cage extends over the top of the enclosure, which made REALLY ugly shadows all over everywhere.

SO... In capture NX I gaussian blurred the background really big time, leaving only the face and crest. I then went into Photoshop (GASP! That's right, me using photoshop) and fixed a couple areas with cloning that were horribly shadowed), then went back to Capture NX and did the rest of the PP.

In the end, I think it looks OK. Certainly not good, let alone great, but considering the situation I was in I am rather happy with the way it turned out.

polymoog · Jan 30, 2009

I think it came out very well, would never have guessed it was taken through bars if you hadn't said.

Also, really nice that you choose to explain your PP so we can see how you arrived at the final image. One of my main problems is that I just don't have the patience to sit and PS all my pics, esp when I have been to a motor event and taken maybe 600 - 1000 pics, and I might still only have 100 usable after that, but mabye more could be saved if I had the patience to learn more about PP ...

What are the two technical flaws you were thinking of, that you mentioend in the first paragraph, because I can't see them

sabbath999 · Jan 30, 2009

The "hair" is not crisp at the ends of the crown (because of defraction from the cages) and the large gray blob on the top of the back right next to the neck... that's where feathers should be but they were completely blown out. The entire out of focus area on the bird's back is completely PP'd, in reality it was fairly sharp.

BTW the "hair" is, of course, feathers.