Greylag Geese

[Iain Barker]

In between taking my last two Gill images I captured these two Greylag geese flying by and was happy to have got them both reasonably sharp. I wish the left birds head was clear of the wing but other than that am happy with it.
I have now upgraded to Lightroom 5 but am unsure of how to get the best out of it compared to Lightroom 3 so any tips there would be appreciated.

Lightroom adjustments included WB, Crop, clarity, vibrance, saturation, highlights, lights, darks, shadows and sharpening. Crop is full width with some of the featureless sky cropped from below to give a pano crop.

Nikon D7000 300mm F4 AF. 1/1000sec f5.6 ISO 400. Manual metering.

[Diane Miller]

Nice shot with the two different wing positions, and I like your crop. Some color in the sky would be nice but you get what you're given.

For LR 5 adjustments, I like the e-book by Michael Frye, "Landscapes in LR5" -- well worth $15! It applies to much more than landscapes.

[Iain Barker]

Thanks Diane, I will take look at that book.

[Randall Farhy]

Hi Iain, interesting capture here-I like that both are clear in the frame and that the sky hasn't caused too much of a backlight situation. For the repost, I created two layers and blended as follows:

Top Layer: Background copy, Screen Mode 100% opacity

Middle layer: Gradient Fill Dark Blue to white (blue on bottom) Linear Mode 65% Opacity (Try different modes on this layer as there are several interesting possibilities)

This setup reduces the tone of the sky while bringing out a bit more on the Geese.

Flipping the image makes it so the eye see the more pleasing wing position first.

[Diane Miller]

Interesting -- a subtle but nice improvement, to me!

[Iain Barker]

I think Randall's repost has improved the detail on the breast of the birds but to me the wings now lack detail to my op. Maybe the adjustments need to be more selective.
I can't see that flipping the image made any difference, as my eye is drawn from the nearest bird to the furthest in both cases.