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this shot was inspired by a photo of an eagle i saw on flickr which seemed to materialise out of the darkness. this is a very similar effect which needed a real fast shutter, wide aperture and flash. normally i would frame the guy on the left side looking in, but cos i wanted that effect as above, he's on the right side looking out of the frame.

sb800 set up on tripod about eye level right side
sb600 on ground on right aimed up.

no problem with these guys cos they were happy to explore and peck at the strobes while i was standing quite a way back. the MFD of the 300/4 allowed me to get very close and have it focus fine. i was probably 3m away. this is not a crop.

a bit dissapointd with his beak. i was hoping for it to be better exposed. i dont really know why it didnt light up more. perhaps aiming the sb600 up has cast a long shadow from the underneath of the beak ??? i dont know but i'm pretty pissed i didnt get it right cos otherwise i love the shot.

the sharpness of the 300/4 continues to astound me.





much better exposure of his beak in this one. this is shot at iso 800 to get the colour of the background in this shot which was a glowing gold colour. i did cheat here though and substantially lifted the L&C in the background in PP to give it a bit more depth and colour.

sb800 set up on tripod just above eye level left side aiming down.
sb600 handheld aimed directly at subject

Beautiful, beautiful... (even these birds are not exactly, good looking).

IMO for the first one, you can try cropping out the black on the left and crop out a new black area to its right.

Both very nice Think I prefer the mystery of the first with the black BG.

Love the first. Agree with the crop as per Yi-P

thanks Yi-p. great suggestion...why didnt i think of that ? lol

i also managed to brighten the beak by cutting it out of the RAW shot after i bumped up the exposure and then and transporting it into CS3 and used layers to rub out the rest. first time i've ever done something complicated like that, (complicated to me anyway !). i'm VERY happy with the result of it from a PP pov. i was surprised how easy it was.

but i dunno, it doesnt feel like my shot anymore. i'm sure that sounds stupid. lol

The last one looks great..A little CS3 magic, to finish your vision.

MATT

i feel dirty.

Rooz wrote:i feel dirty.

Sometimes that's the price we (as *artists*) pay.

I prefer the pp'ed shot, at least the seagull has somewhere to look.