The Three Stooges

[Julie Kenward]

I caught up with this gaggle of Canada Geese goslings this morning at a nearby lake. I learned the hard way not to get too close to the babies last year so this year I added my 1.4 teleconverter to my 70-200mm lens and sat down about 20-30 feet and waited for them to come my way. Just as they did something spooked the mother and sent them all scurrying down the hill, their little legs cranking at full speed. They totally cracked me up. :D

I added a soft diffused look over the image, erasing it from over the goslings to give the image a baby soft look. Did I go too far? Should I mask off more of the foreground?

Canon 40D, EF 70-200mm f/4L, 1.4 TC
f/8 @ 1/200th, ISO 400
Manual mode, pattern metering
Overcase skies, handheld, no flash
Processed in ACR & CS4; levels adjustment, cloned some of the BG to remove distractions, small crop.

[Rene Quenneville]

Nice color tones that fit well the softness. I do not feel it is overdone.
The birds may be a little too much to the left in the frame.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Lovely image Julie.

I don't know what pros will say about the three birds looking away, but by doing so it could evoke a sense of loneliness.

I would suggest to desat the greens a bit.

[Randy Stout]

Jules:

A nice image. The pose and cropping really made me think about these three youngsters venturing out togethor to explore a big, new world. I also had a brief image of the three musketeers.

I would consider cropping off about 50% of the OOF foreground, but wouldn't want to move the birds too far down in the image, without balancing it with a corresponding crop from the top.

Very nice.

Randy

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks everyone. I was wondering about cropping from the bottom as well but just couldn't decide. I think that's also why I was thinking it might just need less blurring at the bottom but I'll take another look at it.

Juan, when you said you would desat the greens a bit I did lower the luminance level to get them to be less "flashy" but the yellow tones of the rest of the image made me stick with the grass the color that it is as I felt it balanced well overall. I might look at desaturating it all just a bit more but I did like the "bright spring feel" the image has.

[Stu Bowie]

Julie, Apart from taking a bit off the top, I think your comp is perfect. Lovely DOF in the FG, and although looking away, you have eye contact on all three, and all looking into space. I like the soft light and colours in this. I actually like this a lot. Congrats.