Limpkin

[Steve Maxson]

A limpkin photographed at Orlando Wetlands last year. I would wish for a bit more of a head turn and a little more DOF on the log. 20D, 500 f/4, 1/180, f/6.7, ISO 400. Comments are welcome.

[Arthur Morris]

Moving well to your left would have gotten a better head angle and avoided the merge of the bird and the left-hand tree. Sharp and a good EXP.

[Steve Maxson]

Moving well to your left would have gotten a better head angle and avoided the merge of the bird and the left-hand tree. Sharp and a good EXP.

Thanks Artie. That's a good suggestion. Sometimes, in the heat-of-the-moment, things like that get overlooked, though thinking back, there may have been another foreground tree just out of the frame to the left which would have precluded a substantial move.

[Arthur Morris]

YAW and understood, Steve. All suggestions are made with the assumption that the recommended action might or might not have been possible.

[David Thomasson]

This is an intriguing image. That projection at the top right of the perch forms a sort of mirror image of the bird's beak. Nice capture. Hope you don't mind my experimenting with the background, just for practice.

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/7386/limpkinfm4.jpg

[Steve Maxson]

Love your repost, David. It looks like a completely different (and better) image. :)

[Paul Kusmin]

Really great images, both of them.
I'm quite impressed.
I was hoping to see Limpkin in San Blas Mexico last time I was down there but never saw one.

[Arthur Morris]

David, that is one stunning repost. A photographic illustration of course, but stunning. Please describe your techniques to us.

[David Thomasson]

David, that is one stunning repost. A photographic illustration of course, but stunning. Please describe your techniques to us.

Thanks, Artie. The first step is to mask out the subject -- bird and perch. Here is my layer stack using that mask, working up from the bottom:

First is heavy lens blur applied to the background.

Curves and warming filter, respectively darken and tint the background.

Levels in multiply mode (no levels adjustment) just darkens everything. This is applied selectively to the perch.

The color dodge layer: blank layer filled with black, blend mode changed to color dodge. Paint with white very lightly directly on the black fill to brighten the bird a little.

On the two hue/sat layers, the lightness slider has been pulled down to darken, then selectively applied as you can see on the layer masks.

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/3282/layerstack2xs4.jpg

[Steve Maxson]

Hey David, thanks much for spelling this out for everyone.