Swans at Whitesbog NJ

[Muriel Bell]

Taken in mid afternoon Canon 30D, Aperture preferred, auto white balance, 400 m, f/8 @ l/3000. Minus l-l/2. Water dark brown in real life; even darker in photo, perhaps because of underexposure, present color from Levels. Just learning photoshop and know nothing about color. Could some kind of color correction help? All other criticisms and/or advice will be appreciated. Muriel Bell

[Philippe Collard]

Hello Muriel,

You captured a nice action scene here and with the proper shutter speed we can see all the water droplets frozen in the air, very cool. The format suits the picture very well, expect for the crop that is a bit too tight on the left. I have the feeling that the swan that's escaping the party will soon bang into the frame ;)

As far as color is concerned it looks real good from here. Your swans look good, unless you corrected in Photoshop this picture doesn't look underexposed. More light and the whites would have been burned. One question : do you shoot RAW? If not that would be really interesting to give it a try.

Cheers,

Philippe.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Muriel Will try to color balance below Your whites look fine exposure wise The main problem is contrast Need to photograph those in late in the day for best results Also keep looking for patterns in the formation Not easy getting a group image !!!

[Muriel Bell]

Dear Alfred: Thanks so much. You re-working of the color balance improves it so much. It encourages me to hit the books on Photoshop and experiment to try to replicate your edit.
Muriel

[Muriel Bell]

Dear Phillipe. Wanted to thank you for your comments on my swan scene. Will revisit and see if I've got some margin on the left and redo. Not up to raw yet but thinking hard about it.
Muriel