Reddish on the Hunt

Greetings. What to do with a back lit, heavy cropped image? (the once confused emoticon here)

Attachment 106527

A rare sight for me, but mostly backlit views, sigh. Some play with Topaz Adjust, several runs of Topaz Simplify, a Lab curves here and there, some cloning & blending, and you see the result. Thanks for looking.

Happy New Year, everyone! I appreciate all the great critiques I've gotten here over the year & the honor of seeing all your great work. Thank you.

And a special thanks to Denise, Kerry & Indranil for moderating this great forum.

Cheers,

-Michael-

Michael, I like the Topaz effects you've gotten. I could see a slight crop from the top also. I've enjoyed your images this year. Happy New Year:S3:

Michael, I really like the subtle effect of the filters. Cool pose and you accentuated it nicely with the comp. I second a sliver off the top. Michael, we appreciate all of your contributions to the forum also. Happy New Year! :S3:
(the once confused emoticon here) too funny!

Hi Michael, Really nice work on this image. Really like the pastel colors, and the reflection of the bird is so cool. As already mentioned, nice comp. Good work preserving just enough details in the bird and water that makes this work so well. Happy New Year, to you.

It looks like you did a good job figuring out what to do with it. Cropping from the top -- or the bottom -- would probably be a good thing because it would move the break in the water surface away from the center of the image.

I really like your filtering, the reflection looks very cool! I second a sliver off the top. Nice work!

Cheryl, Denise, Jay, Dennis, Judy,

(er, sorta lost track of this thread for a while...) Thanks much for your comments. Agree with the crop ideas... went with a 2:1 aspect cropped mostly from the top.

Cheers,

-Michael-