Black Crow

[Levina de Ruijter]

Well, here's my first image. I chose one of a crow that I photographed in December. I am rather pleased with this image, but am also unsure about a number of things, like that background and the position of the bird in the frame.

The crows are usually rather wary of people, but this time I could come closer than ever before. I almost stepped on one! Maybe because I was covered in black, head included? So I decided to take some portraits and tried to get as low as possible.

The image is ff except for a sliver left and top to position the bird better within the frame.

It was a very cold day, light was flat, with a grey, dull sky, and everything was covered with snow. That background is in fact OOF snow.

It was taken early in the afternoon at a local park with my Canon 40D and the Canon 300mm f/4.

Settings were:

ISO 200
f/4
1/200 s
Hand held
No flash
Manual
Spot metering

Processing:
In LR3: removed some sky left and top
In PS: levels and curves (selectively applied), a small amount of noise reduction on the background, and some selective sharpening on the bird, using Smart Sharpen.

Thank you for looking.

http://levinaderuijter.zenfolio.com/img/s3/v26/p371440799.jpg

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Levina

[Julie Kenward]

Levina, welcome to ETL! Glad to see you're posting. I like this very much - there's really good detail throughout the image and that's saying something for how black this bird is.

You asked about composition...so let's start there. If you head over to the educational forum there's a tutorial there that shows you how to set up a ROT's grid in Photoshop. This lets you toggle on and off the gridlines for the ROT's positions and helps you make those choices as to how to compose an image to bring out its strengths. Here, you have that beautiful eye that is going to draw the viewer's in so I recropped it to put the eye in the ROT's top left grid mark. This cut off some of the top and left side of your original image.

Next, I used the spot healing brush to quickly clone out the white specs on the black bird's feathers and beak. You don't have to be perfect about cleaning up every tiny spec - this is nature we're viewing here - but taking out most of the distractions will help keep the viewer's eye on what's right about the image instead of getting stuck on what's wrong (i.e. the white spots on a black bird.)

I also opened a hue/saturation layer and selected the blue tones from the drop down menu and pulled them back (moved the slider to the left) so more black and less blue came through.

Finally, you have a beautiful eye with a good reflection but these can almost always be made better and brighter with a quick curves adjustment. Select the inside of the eye only (I used the quick selection tool) and then open curves. Pull the top right grid line up a bit and the bottom left grid line down a bit and see what you get. Tweak it further until you can see the highlights and lowlights of the eye in all their detail.

Here's a repost of your image with just the few small tweaks to it. Let me know if you have any questions about what I did (or how) and don't forget to leave critiques for the other images...you'll learn just as much from reading and commenting on other people's images as you will on your own because you'll be much more objective with someone else's work!

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Levina,
Welcome to the forum! You should have no issues now! Very good detail in the blacks and I like the direction Jules took for the BG.........very nicely done overall!

[Levina de Ruijter]

O I'm so glad it's up! I was thinking I did something wrong.

Thank you very much, Jules for taking the time to do all this. I really appreciate that. And wow, you are good. I love your eye for detail.

As for the ROT, I know the principle and I try to shoot and always crop with that in mind, but I struggle with it often, like with this image, when, with the given dimensions and the bird being where it is, I can't put what needs to draw the viewer's attention on that grid mark. But now I gather from your crop that it is all right to abandon the original image dimensions and crop it to whatever is needed, even if it ends up being square-ish?

The eye: I usually select the eye and use a brightness/contrast adjustment layer to enhance it. Probably did that here too, but obviously not enough, or not well enough. It's actually the only thing I use that adjustment panel for. In future I will use curves to do it.

I am happy with these changes. I'm hesitant to admit it, but I am a bit ambivalent about reducing the blue in the feathers. Because of their black, shiny feathers crows do reflect other colours. I have the feeling that the bird seems a bit duller now. I'm probably wrong... :e3

Cleaning up the bird works wonders though. That never even occurred to me!

Thank you again, Jules. I feel I have learned more from you with this one image, than in two years of shooting.

[Levina de Ruijter]

Thank you, Roman, for your kind comments!

[Julie Kenward]

Levina, sometimes a person's first post gets stuck in the spam filter and we have to approve it. I'm guessing Roman caught it before I did and got it to go through. Don't worry - it shouldn't happen again to any of your other posts.

Now, as for the changes...

I think your eye looks pretty good as it was but just wanted to make sure you remember to give it that "pop" each time.

Also, if you think the feathers looked better (and more true) with the blue cast then leave it alone - I wasn't there; I didn't see what you saw. I just thought it looked a little over done but it's your image and your vision.

As for the ROT's...there's a tutorial on it by James Shadle in the educational forum that you should read. Lots of good info there about what to put in the gridline markers and how to set up Photoshop so you can crop your image and then check it using the ROT's grid to see if that is the best crop. In CS5 the grid automatically appears every time you crop - saving me TONS of time with multiple crop attempts! I think it's the best thing they did to the latest version. :S3:

[Levina de Ruijter]

Ah, now I understand. I 'met' Roman in the 'introduce yourself' thread, but never noticed he was a mod! Can you be believe that? I'm so blind sometimes... So he fixed it. Nice!

I recently upgraded to CS5, but never even checked the cropping tool. That's how used I am to doing it in Lightroom. But I will definitely read James' tutorial.

And I will also have another look at the feathers of my crow. I feel as though I'm starting all over. Which is not a bad feeling at all. It's just that you also have to 'unlearn' stuff as well, and that's the difficult part...

Thank you so much, Jules.

[John Chardine]

Oh, I really like the sharpness and detail in this image! Very well done Levina. And the recrop and cleanup in the repost really improves the image. The image is almost black and white and I find images like this respond very well to a conversion to full B/W. If this one is anything to go by I am looking forward more images from you!

[Levina de Ruijter]

Thank you very much for your kind words, John. And I think that Jules was right after all about pulling back the blues somewhat. I just needed some time to get used to that... :e3