Hi Everyone,
OK - I really am going on holiday this time...:D
40D 100-400 @ 400mm
ISO 400
AV F8 1/320 sec
Captive bird, taken during a well-earned pause in the flying demo.
Hope you enjoy him - talk to you all when I get back!!
Best regards to all and so many thanks for all the help, advice and suggestions - I couldn't do it without you...:eek:
Nicki
Beautiful, Nicki! Love the sky reflection in his eye...that is just gorgeous!!! Nice definition on the feathers and good comp. Would like to see the eye even brighter and with a little more "sparkle" but it's really nice as presented!!!
Hi Jules,
Thank you so much for your very kind words. How should I brighten the eye and make it more sparkly? I did lighten it a lot when I was originally working on it, but it didn't look natural and I ended up darkening it a little. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!!
Regards,
Nicki
Lady Nicki,
That is just about the only thing needed to make this one a 10-1/2...:D When you lighten it, make sure you don't over do it. Your capture and close up pose is very powerfull. It has character. The details are razor sharp, and the colors are rich and vibrant...good show...:cool:
Okay, now keep in mind that I would normally never do this to a bird's eye unless I came out and SAID I did this to a bird's eye...
I played with levels and found it pretty close to the result you got (which is really lovely but I felt was getting a bit lost in the high key of the rest of the image.) Then I remembered that I had downloaded a Photoshop action that had a texture called "gold sprinkles" and I thought, "Hmm..." so I applied a layer of that over the entire image and then erased it away from everything (using a mask) except for the iris of the eye. It's a very subtle change and it does cover the look of the real eye so I probably would never do it again - but I wanted you to see what I tried...
Then, I made a duplicate image (Ctrl + "J") and changed that layered copy of the image to multipy mode and then greatly lowered the opacity. It brought down the high tones and deepened the middle and dark tones a bit.
Now...if your intent was a high key type image then you greatly succeeded...but if you wanted something more true to life this is a way to take a high key (or, in some cases, an overexposed) image and bring it back down again without losing the pop of the overall image.
Again, this is just another interpretation of your original - doesn't mean I like it better than yours - just wanted to show everyone that you can really alter an image by doing some really simple changes in Photoshop.
Last edited by Julie Kenward; 08-26-2008 at 06:38 PM.
I prefer Nicki's original to Julie's. The original looked good enough to me until Al's brought the HAP in ;) OK, so the image is not perfect but it's still good for most :D
On the Look-Out...
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