Canada Goose Experiment

Taken in 2012, this image was underexposed and extremely noisy but I just couldn't bring myself to trash it. I was experimenting with low light/high ISO flash settings to try and make use of a sweet spot on a lake that affords a relatively close position to Canada Geese taking off and landing. Due to a high tree line, this particular spot doesn't have useable morning or evening light.

Due to the high noise present (fall scene, a lot of red hues and underexposure) I opted against the use of noise reduction. Processing is quite involved with layers and blend modes, a texture, Topaz BW effect and Watercolor II, along with LR5 adjustment settings. Flipped horizontally. Approximately 75% of the frame intact.

Canon 7D 400mm F5.6 (handheld) 600 EXRT camera mounted. ISO1600, F5.6, 1/250 (shutter sync speed) Evaluative ETTL flash mode.

I like the capture of the goose and the wing blur very much. Good composition, too. The more I look at the image, the more I like it. Perhaps the fact that I like Canada geese so much has something to do with it, but I think you get a lot of the credit for such a good image. The only thing I'm a bit conflicted about is the vertical lines, which I assume were part of the texture you applied. Unless I want the lines in a texture to show, I blur the texture layer just enough to get rid of them. In this case, though, there's something to be said about the visual tension created by the direction of flight against the vertical lines. I popped your image into Photoshop and blurred the background to see the difference. There is definitely a different feel, but I'm still not sure which I like better.

I think you did a very good job of salvaging the image and making it very artistic. I'm conflicted about the two large light spots under the belly.

I don't see the vertical lines over the bird so I assume they are part of the texture. However, they come a bit close to looking like banding noise, although I have thought it was primarily horizontal.

Dennis-Thanks, much appreciated. Canada Geese, because of their year round presence and numbers during migration, are often considered pests in NJ. Much the same as Sandhill cranes are in other regions I suppose.

The texture is a bit strong though when I minimized the effect using opacity, the image lost something. Anyhow, this image uses a bark texture in addition to the reduced opacity paper in an attempt to give it more of a woodland feel.

I want to try and incorporate some of the background colors from the original, in a watercolor style blended background. Not quite sure how to go about it yet, but I will play with it. As an aside, there are a ton of jpeg artifacts creeping in from the web sourced BGs.


Diane: The lines are part of the texture, the soft blend mode and opacity adjustments lessen their presence on the bird. I hadn't picked up on the blobs under the bird (a goose sitting on the bank) but now that you mention it-it's hard to miss. I'll take a pass at removing them when I get some time (hopefully) this weekend.

Hi, Randall, I really like the toning and the organic feel to this one. I'm not sure whether I like the OP or the RP better - both are nice. Good eye by Diane for catching the blobs - I didn't notice them either but once pointed out they are pretty obvious and I think working on them would make this an even better image.

I like the OP Randall, and agree with Dennis that the vertical lines give it a nice tension with the horizontal flight. Just wondering why the FG wing would show more blur than the BG wing. Because it is closer? Anyways, nice job with the image.

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Originally Posted by Randall Farhy

. . . I want to try and incorporate some of the background colors from the original, in a watercolor style blended background. Not quite sure how to go about it yet, but I will play with it. . .

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If I understand what you want, it's sort of what I did with the hoodoo post. In that one, I did the watercolor treatment on the background, then put a Silver Efex black & white layer on top of that with Normal blend mode and 90% opacity to let some of the color show through. Among the succeeding layers there was a Levels adjustment layer to get more whites and a Curves adjustment layer set to Linear Contrast. Otherwise, the image would've been fairly flat. Alternatively, you can bring a copy of the base layer to the top of the pile, do a watercolor treatment on it, and reduce its opacity to leave as much color as you want over the brown tones. What I did on the image below is sort of like that approach without any watercolor. Not having the original base image, I filled the top of a layer with solid green, the bottom of another with solid blue, masked the respective parts of the goose out of both, and reduced their opacities until little color was left.

This might not be the amount of color you want, but it shows a way of doing it. Salt and pepper to taste.

Randall, I find your RP much more pleasing. (Once you learn about banding noise, you start getting paranoid and seeing it everywhere!)

Randall, nice work, and I definitely prefer the repost without the lines. Sometimes if you don't want the strong color you can desaturate it or use hue to change it. I have done that with several textures including one of the ones I used on the woodpecker to make the greens match better.

Jackie, you have more DOF behind a subject than in front of it most of the time anyway.

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Originally Posted by Jackie Schuknecht

I like the OP Randall, and agree with Dennis that the vertical lines give it a nice tension with the horizontal flight. Just wondering why the FG wing would show more blur than the BG wing. Because it is closer? Anyways, nice job with the image.

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Dennis- that's the look I'm after, my masking and object removal skill sets still need work. Here's a rework which is a bit closer to concept. I pulled back the opacity on the texture layer, added a color layer with noise reduction applied (note lesser detail in the neck area) and played around with several blend modes and positioning on a 6 layer image until I saw something closer to what I wanted. Thanks again for the explanations, they help a lot.

DoF and proximity to focal plane will affect the amount of blur on the forward wing relative to the rear, also this bird was in a slight turn away from camera at the time which might also factor in.

Edit: Upon seeing the post I will go back and either reduce the highlights or contrast, I don't like how the lighter areas on the bird appear compared to the early versions.

Good series on how tweaking affects an image! Randall, I prefer your repost in pane#4 as the goose appears sharper in this rendition. I agree with your assessment on your post in pane #11 that the highlights and contrast need to be reduced.

I like that little bit of color in there. And I agree with Nancy's point about the goose. Maybe back off a bit on its opacity and allow some of the texture to show through?

Good job working on this image. The differences between the different versions are interesting. I like the image in pane #4. The goose stands out from the bg, and had pleasing detail. I like that the eye is clearer in this version. The version in #11 brings in just the right amount of pale color in the bg. Agree with Nancy--a few adjustments will bring back the detail.

Went back with the intent to bring back some detail by reducing opacity on the noise reduction layer-bringing back the detail just about wiped out the color balance desired, bottom line- I have to work on my masking skill. This is another version where the color layer was created using Topaz Watercolor II on the original file. The only NR done was applied by the preset, the image is grittier but it has color and maintains acceptable detail. I spent quite a bit of time learning how to use the patch and content aware tools on this rendition as well. With more work I'll get the knack of this. Thanks again everyone for your input, the people and their willingness to help are what make this forum/website a must visit.

I like where you've gone with this, although I've lost track of what was getting masked. For many uses of masking, the Quick Selection tool in PS works well, with some edge feathering in the Select > Modify menu. To really see the selection hit the Q key to put it in Quick Mask mode and paint with a black or white brush to tweak it. Q key again goes back to the selection. Then hit the Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to apply the mask to a pixel layer (you may need to invert it first in the Select menu). To apply a selection (as a mask) to an adjustment layer, just have the selection in effect when you make the adjustment layer.

Thanks Diane, I will have to try that. When I've masked objects in the past for composite work, they always looked like a paper cutout that required a lot of attention to the edges zoomed in at 300%. WRT this image, I wanted to mask the BW toned goose and use a heavily smoothed BG for the watercolor effect, not a big deal for most I'm sure, but i've struggled with the layer masking. I suppose it's just something I need to practice.