Black Skimmer

Moment caught well.Nice work.
István

Nice detail and background David

cheers
Rob

I think it's very Good David!!! Beautiful detail and colors in the Skimmer, sharp.

I think it's beautiful! great wing position, and I like the slightly dropped feet. very nice details and sharpness.

my only nit is that I wish the wingtips were a little sharper (not sure if this is a DOF or SS issue). I think that on the left wingtip there is a sharpening halo which may be accentuating the oof-ness.

David,
I really like the wing detail, the light in the eye and the action you captured.

Exceptionally nice work on the details in the blacks and whites; in my experience, Black Skimmers are tough exposure challenge. The capture is also strong, and the arch of the body adds some tension to the photo.

Very nice flight shot. I Used to live in Corpus Christi and they would nest in colonies on the shore of the bay.

Works for me! I see a bit of a halo on the left wing, also, but still a very nice shot...sharp right on the head where you want it. Sharon

David,

I like the flight pose you caught the skimmer in and the eye contact you have in this. In the smaller version there are numerous artifacts around the bird plus a strange orange glow beneath the orange part of the bill, I am not sure what caused that to occur in that location but it is not evident in the larger version. I can also see the halo in the larger version that has been mentioned.

Skimmers are difficult to expose properly and I think you did well. It is also challenging to figure out what dof to use not only because of the elongated body of this species but they also have a wide wingspan at 44 inches.

The background in this image is very appealing to me.

Great detail and exposure on the whites

David:
I think you did a good job of exposure and stopping the motion of this difficult subject. Nice catch light and the eye is readily visible - both are problematic with the skimmers. Most of the issues raised have to do with post-processing, rather than camera settings, and those can be corrected.

Can any of you offer me any advise on post processing this to fix it? I'm not sure how to remove the halo over the OOF wing. I use Photoshop elements 8. I'm not very advanced so any help would be greatly appreciated. I think that the OOF wing has more to do with the slow shutter speed. I should have had the ISO a little bit higher to allow for more shutter speed but I wanted as much detail as possible because this bird is very difficult to expose for, very bright whites and deep blacks. Thanks for everyones comments.

Hi David,
This is a really excellent capture of this skimmer. Nice detail in both the blacks and whites and a good head position. I'm not sure what sharpening routine you use but if you sharpened the whole image that could be the cause of the halo. Try selecting only the bird and sharpening it rather than the whole image.

Excellent flight shot, I like a lot the arch of the body and wings' position. Great detail.
Giorgio

David, I don't know how Elements works, but if it is like Photoshop and offers the ability to work in layers, you should definitely be using layers. Then you can turn on and off the effects of each layer adjustment you make to see which one is causing the effect. Noise reduction, shadow/highlight, sharpening, etc can all cause halos if applied too strongly. Their effects can also be masked out of places you don't want them on the layer mask.

David this one is a winner for sure and well worth revisiting the post processes. I use NX2 for my nef's and after the initial processing and crop I use selective high pass sharpening to the subject only and never over the edges, just close to the edges. You could do the same in Photoshop using layers, but not sure about the 8 version.