Cormorant Moon

This is a composite image. :D I added a texture and played around with adjustments and blend modes.

Judy, I really like your creative thinking on this one. The moon and sky colors look very nice. I like the birds and the way they are flying. If it were mine I might lose the last two birds and push the moon over to the right a bit so it's not so centered. BUT that is just my opinion and others may feel differently. Nice work on the composite and I think you really nailed the glow of the moon and the sky.

Beautiful composite, Judy. Love your vision and how you have all the elements together. Agree with Denise on the glow... it has come out very well.

Beautiful glow and blend of your images, Judy. Very nice indeed!

Beautifully executed Judy. If your birds and the moon are different layers I would also try a couple of different compositions as suggested by Denise. It may or may not work but this is lovely as it is anyway.

Judy, I like this a lot and would also like to see a bit different placement for the moon. If you had the canvas and the different layers that Hilary mentions you could move the moon a bit left and hte birds together toward the ULC of the frame. This is a great use of a silhouette and I love your moon glow and sky. Well done!

Thanks everyone. Good suggestions but either I never kept the layered file with the birds separate or I just can't locate it. I printed the original without a texture for a photographers show 3 yrs ago 10 x 7 framed to 14 x 11. So what I have done is remove the last bird. It didn't work with removing 2 birds, it lost the diagonal line and looked truncated. If I'd had it separate I would also have used content aware scale on the background to squeeze it in so the sparse clouds weren't lost in the crop.

Excellent repost.

Thanks Indrinil!

I agree, nicely done on the repost. I think this makes for a stronger composition. Lovely image.

Judy, I think the repost looks very good. I hope you get a chance to do more of these, they are fantastic. I imagine with your cloud and sky collection you can put together some beauties!:)

Love the repost. Would also love to have your sky collection! :)

Very nice composite, Judy! Looks perfectly natural. I love the mood and subtle texture, and the repost looks great.

Judy, the repost (and the original) both look great. I love the subtle texture and the light from the moon.:)

Thanks so much Denise! And everyone who makes suggestions and comments on the images. i have really learned a lot in the short time I've been participating. And been made more aware of things I already knew but wasn't practicing at times :o Not to mention learning new techniques and just getting back into photo enhancement which I used to enjoy before I got an SLR. I was one of the 4 founders and a moderator of Digital Nuts yahoo group, the first group anywhere that I know of for artistically enhancing images. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalnuts/ I'm still a member but i haven't been active in 6 yrs. BTW I don't know where to post links so I hope it's OK to do it here and this is a link to a good tutorial that I used on some images when I participated, it's a pen-and-ink watercolor effect: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...w_page_9.shtml

Thanks Hilary! Up until this summer when I started shooting sunsets I had very few sky images except ones that had birds in them! 80% of my photography was birds until a couple of years ago and especially after I got the 5D 2 last November.

Thanks Christopher!