goose blur

[christopher galeski]

first time I have posted a out of the box photo,lighting not very good here in the UK in the mornings,so I thought if you can not beat them join them,tried this shot of 2 canada geese taking flight,using slow shutter speed,hand held,turned the shot to black and white,sharpened the shot,to make the noise stand out more,and give the image texture,f/5.6,1/8sec,iso800,cannon 7D,400mm prime lens.comments good or bad welcome.thanks.

[denise ippolito]

Christopher, Welcome to OOTB. Nice first post! I like the image design and the idea to turn this to B&W is interesting. The noise does add something to the image. Since you aren't afraid of the noise I might lighten the image a little if it were mine. I always try to get the birds angling towards me but sometimes having them flying away can be nice too. It seems a bit tight top and left for me but that is a personal preference. Good thinking to go for a blur in that situation.:S3:

[Steve Adkins]

Welcome Christopher!
Neat to see some Honkers from the other side of the pond. :S3: I like this blur/subject a lot. Great timing. I think Denise makes a good suggestion to lighten it a bit. If you want to restrict your lightening to just the mid and highlights you might try a luminosity mask. Great tutorial at... http://www.confessionsofaphotoshopnerd.com/blog/2011/1/5/luminosity-masking-in-photoshop.html

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Christopher,
Looks a bit dark to me overall....so might want to play around with Steve's suggestions.

[John Storjohann]

Hi Christopher;

A nice blur; as Denise mentioned, the overall the image seems a bit too tightly composed, particularly at the top, and, as mentioned previously, a bit dark; this might be a good image to run through NIK's Tonal Contrast, using either the Balanced of Fine preset; it would give it that little bit of "pop" it seems to lack.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Christopher, very nice amount of blur to this one. Agree on lightening the image and on the tightness at the top edge.

[Dennis Bishop]

If you do decide to try lightening this, Steve's suggestion about luminosity masks is a great one. I've just recently learned about them and have been relying on Tony Kuyper's site for information. He also sells his actions for producing the masks.

I'm not always drawn to bird blurs, but the more I look at yours, the more I like it. Your conversion to black & white probably has a lot to do with that.

[Indranil Sircar]

Welcome to OOTB, Christopher. Great first image... lots of good suggestions above. Thanks for sharing and looking forward more from you.

[christopher galeski]

thanks everybody for your comments,agree on being tight,but I was quite close to subjects.thanks again.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Christopher, welcome to OOTB! I really like the black and white treatment and the amount of blur. I hope you keep on posting here:S3:

[christopher galeski]

Thankyou Cheryl,for your nice comment.