Egret in the Clouds

[Cheryl Slechta]

I took this image downtown recently at City Hall in Gainesville - they have a pond with large rocks and I had gone there to take some shots of the reflections in the pool. An egret flew in and groomed himself on the rocks for a long time. I worked on this several ways but ended up with this - I thought it looked like an egret in the mountains with the clouds floating around him. I first took the image into DAP and ran Benson for about 200-300 strokes to provide a texture layer (thanks Denise for this tip:S3:) and blended it with the original. I then used Topaz B&W and changed the Quad Tone until I got something that looked like it had touches of gold and ink and also used the Simplify adjustment , then Nik Color Efex Contrast Color to change some of the colors a bit and then Topaz Adjust Exposure Correction. I added kanji which means tranquility.
Thanks for looking. Comments and suggestions appreciated.

[Dan Brown]

Nice work, Cheryl! I like the egret alot. I wish that the kanji showed up stronger. Maybe if it was backed with rock and no foliage?

[Nancy Bell]

The bkgd effect is very cool. I really like the posture of the egret and wonder if a bit of added glow would give it more prominence, if that is something you might want. I just googled "kanji". What a wonderful group of characters and you have inspired me to use them in my images for additional meaning.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Nancy, thanks for your comments. I create mine by using Photoshop>File>New and choose Transparent for the Backround Contents. Then you can paint your kanji and apply them to any image you want.


The bkgd effect is very cool. I really like the posture of the egret and wonder if a bit of added glow would give it more prominence, if that is something you might want. I just googled "kanji". What a wonderful group of characters and you have inspired me to use them in my images for additional meaning.

[denise ippolito]

Cheryl, When I first opened the image I thought that it looked a little busy but then the background really grew on me and I like it a lot. Nice eye for this one!

[Anita Bower]

Really interesting. The gold tones are a nice touch. It does look like mountains. I wish the head stood out more from the background. Nice composition.