Turkey Hunting D300 style

[sjlarue]

On a recent rainy day birding trip, I was driving by a bean field and spotted this turkey poking it's head up out of the beans. I turned my car around hoping that it was still there...it was. So I propped my camera up on my window turned off my car, and turned on my hazard lights(I was in the middle of a country road after all), then fired off a few "rounds". As you can see from my EXIF, the lens was already maxed out so any composition would have to come from PP.

The one and only time the sun came out for the day was right as I was taking the pictures.



I did some basic changes in ACR. As well as cropping to draw attention to the eyes, and straightening to fix the BG. Then opened it in CS3 as always as a smart object 16-bit.

While in CS3 I added a Curves layer as well as a levels layer for brightness and contrast. then a selective color adjustment layer to punch up the browns and the little bit of red.
Plus the bean leaf in the front was a little distracting because it was moving and had a little motion blur so I cloned out the motion blur to give it a crisper edge.:



Print came out OK..but I wanted something different ...So I added a B/W adjustment layer and colorized it, I knocked the greens all the way down, and the yellows to about midway:



Print was perfect.

EXIF:
Camera: NIKON D300
Lens: Tamron 200-500mm f5.6-6.3
Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 490.0mm (35mm equivalent: 735...
Exposure Time: 0.0100 s (1/100)
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO Equiv.: 200
Whitebalance: Manual
Light Source: Flash
Metering Mode: spot
Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

[garrettth]

I'm diggin the third one... I mean really...that's an awesome shot now.

[sjlarue]

Originally Posted by garrettth

I'm diggin the third one... I mean really...that's an awesome shot now.

Thanks, two years ago, I would have to let it go by. I had a D70 and the amount of cropping necessary would have made it a trash picture.

[Imacer]

Nice photos.

[sjlarue]

Thanks. I appreciate it.