This Osprey had caught a fish it could nearly carry. It was sitting on the fence, looking like it needed a rest. When it finally flew towards the nest it was flyimng low, it looked like the osprey had difficulties going up. It disappeared behind some bushes on the way yo the nest, but I couldn't see it reaching the nest with the fish. Florida april 08. I was standing near my car, I havn't cropped it, this is certainly not a great photo but I like to try this mix of the wild and the man-world,two worlds that in reality very often are so close. In most nature photography we try to extract man, to make it look wild, in a 19 century romanticistic look at nature, maybe it can be fun - and educating ?? - to work with this paradox.
Last edited by Brutus Ostling; 05-15-2008 at 06:07 PM.
Brutus
I, too like to have images of the interaction of wildlife with man......it shows the struggles and adaptations they have made. The light was pretty harsh and it looks like the whites are "toasty" but it's an interesting image.....especially with the car as the BG. He does look a bit perplexed about what to do.
I like it. The whites are bright relative to the rest of the image, but they are not blown out (I measured and nothing gets much over 240 on the bird, and a little higher on the fish) so you could easily process them to tone them down a little.
I like the pose and the texture of the feathers on the neck of the bird.
I think a good title might be "Drive Through Meal" or "Fast Food." :D
First:
Select> Color Range - Highlights
Select> Modify> Feather - 3 pixels
Duplicate layer (CNTRL/CMD J) change the layer to multiply mode (it will be a bit ugly right now)
Change the opacity of the layer until it looks natural.
Duplicate the layer again (this will give another multiply layer with the same settings) and tweak the opacity as needed.
That was probably enough, but I wanted to tone down the fish a little more so I de-selected everything and then used a Quick Mask to select the fish (see Robert O'Tooles APTATS1 for the full explanation ((Artie also posted something on it not long ago either here or in a BAA bulletin)).
Once I selected the bright fish, I made another multiply layer to tone it down some.
Hope this helps,
Jim
P.S. If you want to take it up a notch further, look around here for Artie's technique for enhancing the eye.
and thanks. Good job! Better than I would have done it.
I only do that when it comes to real publishing. Yes, I learnt the same method from Artie (thanks once again!) and I use it in situations like this before printing.
The fact is I should be even more careful going to the web, because when I downsize the photo to 800 pixels I also use some unsharp mask - approx. 200-400 % &, 0,2 pixel and level 0 - which highlights the highlights even more and therefor makes for Example the white fish's highlights much worser.
Thanks for doing it and making it better.
I havn't had time to surf on internet and photographic web-sites for some years, but when I found this site it was so fun - so many very good people here - that I had to post some photos and look at other's.
I love the shared habitat between man and bird...:eek: Hey; a bird has to do what a bird has to do!!!:D Congrats on the image. You were at the right place, at the right time...:eek::cool:
Osprey in the middle of the traffic
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