Short-billed Dowitcher

[Paul Lagasi]

On a recent trip to Seattle, my Wife and I visited the city Aquarium. They have an exhibit called "Birds and Shores", a lovely walkthrough that has many of the birds found on the west coast. Many of them have been seriously injured and can never be returned to the wild. Using the new Tamron 150-600 allowed me to get some great closeup's. This Dowitcher is one of those birds, it had lost one of its legs.

I used Adobe CS5 to enhance the colors, removed distracting birds legs and blurred the background.

Thanks for looking.

[Dennis Bishop]

Super colors and a very nice composition. I'd not have known that you'd removed anything, and I really like the background. Given that many birds -- especially shore birds -- often stand on one leg, I probably wouldn't have thought anything about that. It's good that it's been given a place in the aquarium.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Paul, this is such an elegant treatment. She looks kind of forlorn and I'm always so worried when I see a shorebird standing on one leg because you never know if they've got both legs. I'm glad this one is in a sanctuary.

[Paul Lagasi]

Thanks Cheryl and Dennis. Dennis here is the original image cropped the same.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Wow, Paul, you did a great job with the clean-up!

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I agree, really good job with the clean-up Paul. Great DOF too. I like the enhanced colours and the soft bg. Very lovely.

[Diane Miller]

Beautiful and very well done. Seeing the original makes that statement even stronger! I would suggest softening the edge where the BG gets darker toward the right -- making it more irregular.