this water buffalo was another of my captures at lion country safari. this one presented an interesting challenge which took some time to overcome. there is a fence in the bg with three posts. i tried gaussian blur, but the transition between the bg and fg did not look natural and i did not know how to fix it. after thinking for a while, i tried the gradient tool with gaussian blur and it worked!!! used the minus brush to take it away from the buffalo and now there's a seamless flow to the blur!! is there an easier way to do this? i know you can still see the posts, but i think it is now acceptable.
D300, Bigma at 135mm, f/5.6, 1/500s, 0EV, ISO 400
thanks for looking. comments and critiques are appreciated.
thanks al!! that's what it looked like before i posted it, but i desaturated it a bit right before resizing it. i had a tough time color balancing it. had a real bluish tint to it and i kept working at it til i got it where i liked it. then i went and changed it again:confused: cant leave well enough alone i guess?!!
Is Find the Fence Posts sort of like Find Waldo? I had to really look, especially for the middle one so I think the fade to Gauss worked well. I think the re-post is a good improvement.
I am glad you detailed how you handled the problem, helpful to this novice PP-er.
Gail
Harold, I just watched a video on how to do this - it involves using the channels setting in Photoshop and it lets you "erase" the areas that you want the blur to disappear in leaving the rest of the image with a nice, gradual blur. I'll try to get a tutorial together on it and I'll PM you when I get it together.
For my taste, you have a bit more blur at the top of the image than I would care to see...it almost looks like it's bleeding together, but I sure applaud you for finding a solution to your situation instead of folding the cards and walking away!
Good evening Mr. Doktari,
I like your composition Sir. The background does not bother me at all. Looking at your exif data, you captured at f/5.6; perhaps if you go wider on aperture you can get a more defused background. I don't know if your Big Mama goes any wider. Does it? anyway congrats I like it...:D
Just Being Lazy
