sunset silhouette

This sandhill crane was parachute landing into one of the crane pools at the Bosque last November. The sunset was spectacular, but the lighting was not so intense as here. But a year later, my imagination called for that bird to be parachuting as a silhouette into a very colorful sunset - so here 'tis. Color Efex filters included bi-color gradient, light-darken, color contrast. I'm not sure this is the right forum, but the background has been substantially altered so it doesn't belong on Avian Wild and Free.

C & C appreciated.

Keith this is spectacular! Colors are rich and vibrant- I like the gradient Bg -real nice, if this were mine I would touch-up 2 small spots in BG near wings ,before printing-Love the dangling feet!!!

I love it, too. I see a slight halo around his beak and you either have noise or posterization in the URC - other than that...it's a winner for sure.

Thanks, Denise, Jules. You're right about the artifacts near the beak. I took a pass at cleaning it up in the repost. It was a lot trickier than I thought it would be. It seems a little better here. Hope it looks better on your monitors.

Keith, Great job on the re-post. I'll bet you sell tons of this shot!

Thanks, Denise. There's still some pixellation showing on the repost, but the print shows none and the colors are gorgeous (if I do say so myself)...

Repost is fabulous, I may go a touch lighter on the sky. Well done!

The bird looks sharper in the repost which is a good thing. What bothers me is that the bird is flying into the darkest part of the frame...

Thanks, Artie and Fabs. I have lightened the sky and think it looks better, even though the bird is still flying toward the dark. There is some residual posterization (from repeated JPG posts), but the print from the PSD file looks great.

The third one is the best by far. Headed there on WED...