First of all it is a lovely image with great mood. Crop wise I would have slight more room on the right than left since is the direction he is looking. Would straighten the horizon ... can use the ruler tool and use the eye/eye reflection.
Space wise might give the bird a little more room in frame but this is totally subjective and will wait to see for others ideas.
The image has a cool bluish tint that helps with the mood, I would just tone down some so it won't affect whites in the bird. Dof wise it just fine Just focus on the eye ... getting the entire bird would be impossible !!! Excellent
I like the image very much. I like how the little details in the water drops and foliage contrast with the overall softness of the image. i think I would try giving it more space too, and agree with the bluish tint on the body. I really like the mood in this photo.
Funny that you note the angle is wrong because I carefully rotated the image (ccw) to get the water line at the base of the neck horizontal! Guess that's just my inexperience showing again!! :-)
In order to get more space around the bird I would have to artifically create it as although I cropped some from the top of the image, the sides were pretty close to what you see in the above image (in fact, after a 2 degree rotation I had to use a clone stamp to colour in the missing edge bits).
What tools can you use for extending the frame in the way I would need to?
Hi Julian,
This is a sweet image...I like the feel...the color rendition is good...the first thing that catches my eye is that your subject is slanted to the left...would suggest on giving it a little bit of CW rotation...agree with Mr. Forns on the techs...I like it very much...looking forward to your next one...:cool:
In some images its just a personal call as to the horizon since there is no clear cut way btw what I thought it was the eye reflection its not. If it were its a simple mater to align !!!
For extending canvas you got several ways to accomplish and I believe we got a tutorial .... if not get back to me and will make one. If you have CS4 content aware scale will help. btw remember my point in having a little room for straightening the image, lots of times we go for a precise crop then run into trouble tilting.
Color balance wise I lessen the blue cast but did not remove since it gave the image feel !! Cast wise this is an image with no clear cut right or wrong. I thing the only wrong thing you could do is try to color balance to neutral. Looking forward to the next one !!!
Changes made ..... horizon, slight curves and reduced some of the cast. btw did no give more room which would be a good idea.
fantastic capture, julian!!! i love the mood created and the contact with the bird is awesome. i love the bg in al's repost. seems to be a little softer and adds to the mood.
Thank you for your feedback and help. Posted below is my attempt to implement the changes Alfred and others advised.
Thanks again,
Julian.
PS. I tried several ways of adjusting the blue colour cast and ended up moving the centre point in "levels" for the blue channel, but am not sure if that is the best way to do this adjustment?
Last edited by Julian Mole; 06-24-2009 at 02:38 PM.
Two new points: 1-a good way to level images in situations like this is to use the Ruler Tool to connect opposite edges of the same concentric rings of water (followed by Image/Rotate/Arbitary); that will always get your subject square to the world. 2- There is big dust spot to the bird's right just above the waterline.
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,
Hey Julian, YAW. I look forward to seeing more of your images.
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,
Mute Swan - Advice
Posting Permissions
