Mississippi Kite

[Judy Howle]

This may be a stretch for the theme but almost just red, white and blue! First I used selective color to select the green leaves and desaturated them. I also desaturated the body about 75% as it had some warm tones on the chest and below. Then I used Topaz Clean, Topaz Adjust lomo I with many adjustments but did leave some noise as I liked it, and then light dose of Oil Paint filter in CS6 with lowered layer opacity. I masked the eye on nearly every layer to keep the red and sharpness. I didn't realize their eyes were so red until this set of photos just a few days ago.

[denise ippolito]

Awesome interpretation of the theme Judy! Love the capture, the blue sky and the texture. I might try to soften the vignette a littl if it were mine and juice up the eye just a touch! Nice work.

[Anita Bower]

Nicely done. My eye goes right to the bird. By limiting the colors, you made the leaves and branches somewhat abstract, part of the overall design, and not distracting. The oil paint filter adds nice texture.

[Dave Woeller]

Awesome capture of the Kite. I really like the processing a lot and agree with suggestions above. I'm wondering if a slight ccw rotation might help this feel a bit more stable. You've captured the theme very creatively.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks everyone, and you have some good suggestions but to rotate the crop without cutting off elements in the image I'd have to start from scratch with the Raw image (I cropped it in Lr) and I couldn't duplicate all that I did to it. Actually, I thought it was kinda cool the way it was leaning and looking around. I'll see if I can lighten the vignette.

[Maureen Allen]

Really nice image of the kite, Judy. I agree about lightening the vignette just a tad. Love the perch.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Judy, a beautiful base image. I agree about the vignette which should be an easy fix. The filtering looks great.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks Maureen and Cheryl! Here's the repost. I even rotated it a little and used content-aware fill and clone stamp so I didn't have to crop off needed pixels. I lightened it by just using a light blue vignette in Color Efex, and I made the eye redder as Denise suggested.

[Anita Bower]

Oddly enough, I prefer the original post.

[denise ippolito]

Nice work on the repost Judy!

[Judy Howle]

Thanks, I believe I do too!

[Judy Howle]

Nice work on the repost Judy!

Thanks Denise!