Bluebirds on Ice

[Anita Rakestraw]

This is not the greatest photo, but it's one I was excited to get and the opportunity is unlikely to be repeated around these parts. The birds were very dark and the photo had quite a bit of chromatic aberration; took a fair amount of PP to get it to this stage. I know the birds are not as sharp as they should be, darn it!

Photograph was created as follows, in full automatic mode (I didn't know much of anything about exposure then and had just bought the camera....):

January '05
Panasonic DMC FZ20
SS = 1/400
f/4
FL = 432 mm.
ISO = 80
Exp. bias = -.33

I'd appreciate critiques on any aspect of the photo, and also if anyone would be interested in taking a stab at PP the original image, I'd be delighted. (Unfortunately it was photographed in high quality JPEG.)

[Nonda Surratt]

What an cool image I can see why you really wanted it, nice job on the capture! I do think the birds colors or something is a bit odd, but I'm not the one to help in the PP department.

[Anita Rakestraw]

Thanks for stopping, Nonda, I really appreciate it.

[David Dilworth]

The photo has a lot of potential. To me it looks like a photo that has been overly saturated in post processing. I would go back and fix that. With too much saturation, the colors of the birds looks unnatural. In decreasing the saturation, if you loose the desired affect on the background, select the birds only and reduce the saturation.

[Anita Rakestraw]

Thanks, David. In fact, the image did NOT have saturation added; even the camera setting for saturation was on normal. Do you think the birds should be desaturated anyway?

[Nonda Surratt]

Anita,

I would give desaturating just the birds a try.