Here's a photo of some lesser yellowlegs in flight I recently took. I feel something's wrong with it (too dark) and I'd like both some C&C, as well as any PP suggestions you might have.

Thanks!

A bit under-exposed and soft.
Better with some cropping to a panoramic format, eliminating some of the distraction on top.
Could use a bit of cloning out bits in the water and/or dust on your sensor.
A bit of curves, a lot of sharpening (over-done on a small jpeg, but you get the idea), bump saturation of the water, decreased luminosity of water.
Bump of overall saturation, vibrance.

Checked your EXIF. What lens is this?
I am surprised the image is soft.

Scott

It's a 100-400L IS lens. It was shot on a cloudy day from a moving vehicle (an airboat).

I'd suggest using Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlights and bumping the shadow sliders a little. Also some Smart Sharpen (to avoid sharpening halos), a little yellow to the Color Balance, a Vibrance and Saturation bump, and a small Contrast bump:

Tom, here's a sequence that should produce a fairly similar result. Follow the eight steps (several posts) using PS CS4. The first image shows the final panel. The second the first change to the image. The third is the sharpening step. The remainder are adjustment layers. BTW, there's nothing special about the sequence, it's just how I got the posted results. If another sequence works better, go for it.

And then the following adjustment layers:

And ....

Karen - thanks for posting those steps, it's simply amazing what changes can be made to rescue such a photo. I too strugle with BIF, using the 100-400 lens, mostly with getting the darn AF point in the right place to begin with!

Jo

Thanks, Jo. I'm not a PS expert by any stretch of the imagination, and it's always better to start with strong images, but with some effort PS can mine an amazing amount of photo goodness from what might otherwise be disappointing images.