Photo Story: Wood Stork Portrait

The Wood Stork is a large wading bird native to the Southeast United States, South America, and the Caribbean. The US breeding population of the Wood Stork is classified as threatened.

Wood Stork Portrait

The Wood Stork has a white body with partially black wings and tail. The neck and head of the Wood Stork are bald with numerous bumps and wrinkles. This bald, textured neck and head make the Wood Stork a perfect candidate for a portrait photograph. This Wood Stork was a cooperative model. He stood still and allowed me to get the shot at quite a close range. My focal length was only 207mm for this shot.

I photographed this Wood Stork along a roadside ditch near Immokalee, Florida. I was shooting in aperture mode and had the exposure compensation set to -1 to avoid blowing out the white details of the bird in the bright sun.

Wood Stork Photo Details

Camera: Canon 5D Mark III
Lens: Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II Lens with 1.4x III Telephoto Extender
Focal Length: 207mm
ISO: 500
Aperture: f/10.0
Shutter Speed: 1/800 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -1
Lighting: Sunny, Late Morning.

Bird Photo Processing

Cropped the photo and lightened the shadows in Lightroom 5.
Used Viveza 2 to selectively lighten the darken the image.
Applied the Lighten/Darken Center Filter in Color Efex Pro 4.
Selectively removed noise from the photo using Topaz DeNoise.

Applied the Photo Pop filter from Topaz Adjust to only the head, neck, and bill using a layer mask.
Selectively sharpened the photo using the Unsharp Mask Filter in Photoshop CC 2014.
The layer mask was copied and modified as needed during the last 3 processing steps.

Written by Martin Belan

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