Landing at Dusk

[Moe Ali]

Canon 7D mk II
300mm F4 + 1.4x tele
ISO 2000
f5.6
1/640


I took this image at the end of the day. The sun had long set and I usually give up taking any pictures, but couldn't resist snapping some shots of these Geese as they came into the river. I had my Canon 7D mk II set on manual mode and so the original image was terribly underexposed. Usually I would just hit delete or not even bother taking the image in the first place. But playing around in post-processing I kind of like what I was able to pull out with this final image. It gives it a dreamy look, almost like it was painted. With the underexposed shot there was quite a bit of noise when I tried bringing back any detail. So I applied some aggressive noise reduction using a plugin in Photoshop, and did some curves, blurring and selective sharpening on the image as well. I added saturation to bring out the colors in the surrounding vegetation, resized and applied smart sharpen for web posting.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Moe, welcome to OOTB! I'm glad you didn't send this to the trash can You're right - it has a painterly feel to it that is very pleasant. I like the touches of blue in the background that are the same as the blue in the wings. My only suggestion would be to tone down the horizontal strip of snow at the bottom center of the image - it's no big deal but it does seem to draw my eye there instead of wandering around in the image. I love the background colors and the vertical tree trunks. I hope we see more of your work here!

[Moe Ali]

Thanks for the feedback Cheryl, and for welcoming me into the forum. I totally agree with you regarding the strip of snow. I really didn't notice it until you mentioned it.

[Diane Miller]

The geese really stand out from the BG -- and great processing for an UE image.

I wonder how it would look with the saturation of the reds-yelllows in the lower trees brought down to match the gray trees.... No criticism, just an idle thought.

[Moe Ali]

I thrive off of criticism Diane

Thanks for the comments, your feedback is much appreciated.

Actually when I was editing this image I did try desaturating the lower foliage, but found that I much preferred the color. My minds eye just likes how the geese are landing from the grey into the color. All I can picture is this flock of geese migrating, and at the end of the day finding a nice place to take a break before continuing on their way. Don't you just love nature!

[Nancy Bell]

This does have a lovely painterly quality. I really like how the geese do stand out from the muted bkgd. The rich red/orange of the foreground is beautiful! Good thinking to "save" this image.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I agree, good thinking. The geese really stand out well. I agree with the strip of snow on the bottom. Welcome to OOTB!

[Moe Ali]

Thanks Nancy and Jackie. I appreciate your comments and feedback.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . when I was editing this image I did try desaturating the lower foliage, but found that I much preferred the color. My minds eye just likes how the geese are landing from the grey into the color. All I can picture is this flock of geese migrating, and at the end of the day finding a nice place to take a break before continuing on their way. . .

I like that idea. If you blurred and lightened the trees in the background, that would emphasize the geese and the place where they're landing. Something like this, perhaps . . .

[Moe Ali]

Thanks for the feedback Dennis. I agree that putting the background a little more out of focus would bring out the Geese. I'll play around with the image some more and see what I can get out of it. Your repost gives me an idea of how much more to edit the background. It's fun editing images that don't need to be technically correct!