Nice Spoonie in need of background help!

This image was captured with James on the Hooptie Deux last month. I think it is a rather nice bird, but the background is obviously the issue. These guys hang out on the mudflats with low tide, and it is not the worlds nicest background. I have added some gaussian blur, destatted the background, done some gardening to clean up some of the worst debris (obviously still some about). In retrospect, I needed to be lower still in my shooting angle. This is about when Artie started to float out to sea when trying to sit down in the water. I would appreciate any inspired thoughts on what to do with this one.

D300 500mm/f4 at f/6.3 1/2500 ISO 800 modest crop for composition. Help!

Cheers

Randy

Hi Randy,

This is a rough work form your small jpeg. I duplicated the layer and did a Gaussian blur on it. Then created a layer mask (bottom of layer palette, third form left) and painted black on the bird to get him back. This needs to be done in the original at 100% pixels for accuracy.

I think you messed with the curves adjustment, bringing up some hot pixels on the whites, especially on the wings, that I'm sure are not in the RAW file.

Great open wing pose and feet moving here Randy, I like Fabs repost, the image looks quite saturated to me, it must have been some great light.

Fabs:

In levels and curves, I pulled the midpoint of the curve down just a bit. Although the whites look hot, they don't register as blown in NX2, but they are really close. The only hot pixels are just a fine trace along the upper wing edge and a few in the eye. Fabs, I did do a black point adjustment as well.

I did try a higher amount of blur, but just wasn't thrilled with the effect. The background may just be too big of a handicap. Thanks for your input.

Nate:

This is the saturation as it came out of the camera. The light was wonderful that morning.
Randy

Try cooling the temp a bit, wing looks hot, red channel for sure.

Here's my version, I've blurred the BG a bit, desaturated the red channel and have also added a catchlight to the eye. Let me know what you think, lovely wing position and light, congratulations!

Hi Randy....we're giving this one a workout.
I took a bit different approach and just used the patch tool to
take the lumps out of the bg, desat some red/yellow, increased some cyan/blue
sat to compliment the pink. Burned in selectively on soft light 50% gray layer.

Although you had nothing blown, I pulled it back a bit futher.....just for aesthetics

just another possibility

Randy,

The original BG is not that bad at all. Cleaning few spots here and there will work. IMO at least! Does the horizon need a little rotation?

I am afraid I would also leave the original BG with implementing Maxis' suggestion of cleaning a few spots. I guess my hesitation to blur and do some processing like that comes from years of shooting slides before I even heard of Photoshop. So, in essence if you wanna blur and stuff, go for it. Personally I would just tidy a few small spots up and that's it. Maybe I need to get with the times. :) I do like the landing pose and the colors look great for me. I wish we had these in Oz. :( Congrats.

Thanks to everyone who helped, both with reposts and suggestions.

The original motivation for the post was because everytime I have posted an image on the mudflats, the background has been the number one comment/dislike. With that in mind, I was trying to try an alternative handling of the background. I had tried several varieties of blurs, but wasn't thrilled with my results, hence the plea for help.

I will do some more pondering,and may very well start over from the original file.

One important lesson that was reinforced on this one, even though the reds were not blown, and I had not intentionally done anything to boost the reds over the original, the image looked so over saturated that it was not believable to many.

I really do appreciate all the expert advice!

Cheers

Randy

Cheers

Pose is great, eye contact and color look great in my monitor, the only thing that bothers me a little are the black spots on the backgound just in front of the bird. Congratulations for a great image

Very interesting thread and great to see all the reposts. I agree, a lower angle would have made all the difference. While the highlights are not overexposed, they do look quite bright compared with the rest.

Great capture Randy, and I would just play with the BG. Ramon's version looks the pick of the bunch to me.