Excellent exposure of a difficult subject. Well done!

I still keep a "loonie" I brought from my trip to the Canadian rockies in summer 02. I saw the common loons there in such beautiful plumage. By the time they get here they are so dull looking...

Nice capture,very difficult to get too close without a canoe. A few suggestions that I think can improve this frame:

1. Would be beter if the bird is composed more to the left.

2. Some noise at the top part should be easy to clean

3. A -3/3 exposure bias was a clever choice. That should have exposed the chest correctly, but it is over-exposed. Possibly happened during photoshoping? With such a bias I assume that the original picture was dark. The best treatment would be to select for exposure from the original file everything but this sensitive area.

4. What's really nice about loons is their red eye, that here is kind of dull. I'd select the eye and expose it shamelessly, to bring out the real colour.

*Edit: I look on my laptop now, and the exposure looks good. Conclusions: Forget about #3, and... Macintosh rules.

Lovely!!....beautiful and elegant capture!
Good work as usual Don!
Carlos

Nice capture of the "loonie"!

Wish for slightly more details around the head/eyes.

The white part in th cheast could show more details.

Understand the difficulty of catching this type of "bird".

Well done!

I think u who complain on these "birds" should try getting a photo like this ur self. This is a very shy bird and an Xllent photo. If u never have heard a loom calling u have missed something. I did not get a close photo like this when I meet the loom this year. It was calling and hiding on the other side of the lake.
Great photo workster !!!! +10

Very nice shot Don. I still am lacking a quality loon shot. Well done.
John

Thanks for the comments.
moserArtist & Roadrunner - I did a bit of surfing to look at other loon photos. The breast of a loon is white and very smooth - there isn't any detail to be seen. I don't think this is overexposed.
Roadrunner - Your suggestion to play up the eye is a good one. However, this photo does show the "real colour" of this loon's eye. This was taken early in the morning with no direct light, and loons eyes are a warm reddish brown - nothing like the bright red devil eyes on some grebes, for example.

Beautiful shot, looks perfect to me, only that an of center compo would look better...!!!

Beautiful shot Don!!
I like the reflections alot

Patrick and Road... said it all!
Nice photo!

Yep, Bipman say all. Like ever, i like so much your duck´s captures!

Ahhh .. a Common Loon in full breeding plumage ... something I rarely see in Rhode Island. This is a tough one to expose properly Don. I imagine that diffuse light would be best. Here your darks are a bit too dark and some whites are a bit over-exposed. There really is no easy solution except to be lucky enough to have ideal lighting for the subject. A bit of noise in the sky here. Still ... a beautiful photo of an exquisite bird.

Well done.
Top mark

Nice composition. Beautiful shot. Neat and beautiful

I like the simplicity of the composition...

Difficult capture but I agree with RoadRunner about composition and mostly exposure. It's seems IMO also that jpg compression enhanced artifact close to the bird skin giving a little blurred effect: try to use some noise reduction - i.e. noise ninja- also for noise of water.

very sharp - very nice!

Cool one.

great capture Don!
cool exposure
I like it

+5

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