A limpkin photographed at Orlando Wetlands last year. I would wish for a bit more of a head turn and a little more DOF on the log. 20D, 500 f/4, 1/180, f/6.7, ISO 400. Comments are welcome.
A limpkin photographed at Orlando Wetlands last year. I would wish for a bit more of a head turn and a little more DOF on the log. 20D, 500 f/4, 1/180, f/6.7, ISO 400. Comments are welcome.
Moving well to your left would have gotten a better head angle and avoided the merge of the bird and the left-hand tree. Sharp and a good EXP.
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YAW and understood, Steve. All suggestions are made with the assumption that the recommended action might or might not have been possible.
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
E-mail me at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net.
This is an intriguing image. That projection at the top right of the perch forms a sort of mirror image of the bird's beak. Nice capture. Hope you don't mind my experimenting with the background, just for practice.
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Love your repost, David. It looks like a completely different (and better) image. :)

Really great images, both of them.
I'm quite impressed.
I was hoping to see Limpkin in San Blas Mexico last time I was down there but never saw one.
David, that is one stunning repost. A photographic illustration of course, but stunning. Please describe your techniques to us.
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
E-mail me at samandmayasgrandpa@att.net.
Thanks, Artie. The first step is to mask out the subject -- bird and perch. Here is my layer stack using that mask, working up from the bottom:
First is heavy lens blur applied to the background.
Curves and warming filter, respectively darken and tint the background.
Levels in multiply mode (no levels adjustment) just darkens everything. This is applied selectively to the perch.
The color dodge layer: blank layer filled with black, blend mode changed to color dodge. Paint with white very lightly directly on the black fill to brighten the bird a little.
On the two hue/sat layers, the lightness slider has been pulled down to darken, then selectively applied as you can see on the layer masks.
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Hey David, thanks much for spelling this out for everyone.