This is still from my last trip to Florida. I remember giving up taking close up shots of the birds at the St Augustine's rookery and went into a more landscape-y style instead. Here is one attempt at that which I quite like from composition perspective. The branch that comes down in the middle gives sorts of a very nice frame to the bird. Unfortunately, I didn't nail the exposure on this one and had to raise exposure on post (+0.65), luckily I was shooting at relatively low ISO (400). Recovered some highlights (-47), raise up the shadows to get the background well exposed (+100), Whites (+42) and Blacks (-12) to adjust the contrast and brightness of the bird. Add a touch of clarity and vibrance to give it a little bit of pop.
In Affinity (Adobe PS equivalent), I added a little bit of BG field blur to the OOF areas and paint some of the white stuffs on the tree barks. I didn't completely eliminate them because it feels a little more realistic to me but at the same time, I don't want the BG to look "rough".
As usual, I am looking forward to hearing from all of you! :)









