Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by vawendy:

Originally posted by HarveyG: Wendy congratulations and I am happy for you for your ribbon. I am fully aware of the skill and patience needed to capture BiF but am I the only one who sees it or is brave enough to mention it? (giantmike touched on it). The PP is not your finest hour. It is heavily pixelated, so much so that actually steps can be seen in the pixels (easily visible if you increase your LCD brightness), both the background and the leading edges of the wings and white area of wing tips. Many JPG compression artefacts, haloing and odd speckles, dots above the head and leading edges of the wings. I would hazard a guess that you've "heavily" cropped the original to get the bird in the 800px frame and/or used some plugins to improve/remove flaws but in turn that has emphasised them. Typically DeNoise and Smart Sharpen or USM enhance these problems when there is low pixel quality to begin with. Regards, H.

I think it happened in the denoise process. The lighting was really poor, and the shot was quite noisy. I ran it through topaz denoise, and I think it happened there. The problem is, I have pretty bad eyes, and I don't see these things. Even after people point it out, I don't see it here. When I blow it up, I start to see it a bit. But it's not something I would have noticed. (I'm getting better at seeing halos, but this type of thing still is really problematic for me eyes.) As I mentioned in the comments, though, I really wished I had more time -- I did think I could have gotten something better. Maybe I was seeing the issues and just didn't realize what they were...

Message edited by author 2013-06-15 09:04:29.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by Barroness:
Congrats! Thas shot is beautiful, your capture of the delicate moment is superb.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by HarveyG:
Wendy congratulations and I am happy for you for your ribbon. I am fully aware of the skill and patience needed to capture BiF but am I the only one who sees it or is brave enough to mention it? (giantmike touched on it). The PP is not your finest hour. It is heavily pixelated, so much so that actually steps can be seen in the pixels (easily visible if you increase your LCD brightness), both the background and the leading edges of the wings and white area of wing tips. Many JPG compression artefacts, haloing and odd speckles, dots above the head and leading edges of the wings. I would hazard a guess that you've "heavily" cropped the original to get the bird in the 800px frame and/or used some plugins to improve/remove flaws but in turn that has emphasised them. Typically DeNoise and Smart Sharpen or USM enhance these problems when there is low pixel quality to begin with. Regards, H.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by Lydia:
Beautiful, Wendy! Congratulations on your ribbon!

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by nam:
Like he's hovering - that wing motion is perfectly beautiful. Congratulations on the ribbon, Wendy.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by Ja-9:
I thought that might be yours...congrats on your ribbon...I tried a couple of times to get a shot of these beautiful birds when I was there...you have to be very, very patient!!! (as you are!!!)

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by grahamgator:
Congrats Wendy; beautiful as usual.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by tanguera:
I love your little bluebirds best of all, Wendy. And this one seems to be reaching out to hug you.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by jomari:
Congratulations Wendy. This gorgeous shot was my equal top pick along with Sandy's.

Dreams of Flight
by vawendy

Comment by sfalice:
Another exquisite image from you, Wendy.
Well done.