Trumpeter Swan

[Steve Maxson]

This Trumpeter Swan is coming in for a landing in the Mississippi River at a wintering site in Minnesota. The temperature is near zero F, thus the steam rising from the water. The white band at the top of the frame is the snow/ice edge of the riverbank. Question: Does the white band add or detract from the comp? 40D, 500 f/4, 1/2000, f/8, ISO 400, hand-held. I used several APATS 2 techniques to process this image. Comments are welcome.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Question: Does the white band add or detract from the comp?

First thing I thought when opening your image was that the white band should go!! Comp looks much cleaner with it cropped away IMO. Besides, the floating ice and rising mist give enough clue to the cold conditions that you don't need that top band to show this:)

I do wish the underwings were better illuminated, but I like the gliding pose.

[Randy Stout]

Steve:
As you may have gathered from my recent posts, I like Trumpeters! I like him gliding through the mist, upturned primaries, position/angle in frame.

On the light gray background of this forum, the white band at top isn't too noticeable. However, on a different background, I think it would be quite noticeable, so I agree with Daniel about getting rid of it.

I would be curious which of the APATS techs. you used.

Cheers

Randy

[Marina Scarr]

Hi Steve: Love the story this pictures tells with all the mist and ice. You captured the swan in a nice flying position. I think his face is especially well illuminated and I like the movement in his wings. Another vote for cropping out the white at the top or covering from below which is about a 1 min fix. If you are opposed to adding canvas, I'd try the crop and see how you like it without the white band.

[Steve Maxson]

Thanks for the comments folks. Looks like the white band needs to go. :)

Randy: re the APATS techniques - I used the "Super-fast Element Removal" to remove another swan that was clipped by the frame edge and the "Selective Noise Reduction and Sharpening" to remove background noise and slightly blur the background. Sharpening was applied only to the bird.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Steve, I like the gliding posture, and this is nice and sharp. With regards to the band, the only reason, I would remove it is because their is too much space above the swan. Cropping halfway down from the top would improve the comp. Just a thought.