Wood Ducks

[Carolyn Arnesen]

It's always great to see a Wood Duck when you're out there birding; seeing five in a local park was a thrill on this cloudy, intermittently rainy day. They stayed in one place for several minutes until a Green Heron flew in to claim the log they were standing on, and they scattered. In a perfect world, the ones on the left wouldn't all be looking out of the frame. I added a bit of canvas on the left to give them space to look into, and used the clone stamp and content-aware move tool to fill it in. I need to better my PS skills in this area. The birds were brightened, leveled and sharpened. NR to the BG.

EOS7D, EF300mm f/4 + 1.4X, manual exposure, evaluative metering, Tv 1/500, Av 8.0, ISO 800

C & C welcome. Thanks for looking.

[Arthur Morris]

Applying a Contrast Mask (Unsharp Mask at 15/65/0)selectively to the bird's faces or perhaps to the whole birds would like give this image a much needed boost. Same with a healthy increase in the Vibrance.... I like the image design.

[Carolyn Arnesen]

Thanks for your feedback, Artie. I went back to the raw file, used the unsharp mask and increased vibrance on the whole birds.
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[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Carolyn. I like the repost so well done on that!