Accordion Neck

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Good Evening, this accordion Neck, just consumed a large fish, and it was a sight to see:confused: I Hope you can imagine the moment!
Don
Full Frame/ no Crop
Canon 7D
500MM
F4 1/8000s ( 830 Am Gatorland)
Eval metering -1
Manual mode
Iso 200

[Lance Peters]

Hi Don - sweet - Looking good!!! Whites look great, love the ruffled neck - colours are spot on, Good clear sharp eye and BG is good.
Like it a lot.

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Yippee! Thks Lance!:D
Don

[OvidiuCavasdan]

I like the pose and composition. Nice details and very good BG, but I see some stripes (?) on bg, right side of the bill?

[Alfred Forns]

Good catch Don !! I like it and caught the moment, bird looks like a happy camper !!!

Don't see much on the right side of bill but just got up :) If any doubt you can run a soft blurring brush over the entire bg for smoothing, normally I do so for every image !!! Good one !!!!

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Hey Al, sounds like another great suggestion... my homework is to read up on the blurring tool... any suggestions, or tips, of course after your coffee.:)

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Don You can make a layer and blur to taste then make layer mask and use brush to take away the parts you don't want blurred. Changing the b&w bg/fg will paint or erase. Pressing the x will make the switch and if you don't have b&w showing then pressing D restore the defaults.

Look in the archives and there should be many tutorials, lots of different ways of doing !!!

..... easiest way is using PhotoKit Sharpener ... it has a blurring tool and all you do is go over the bg !!! :)

[Dave Mills]

Hi Don, I like the sharpness and exposure of the image.Good HA with nicely muted backround.I would like to see a bit more room on the back and front of the bird...

[Peter Farrell]

Excellent image. I love the light, colors, detail, sharpness...
Great work.
Peter

[Don Lacy]

Don, Your best one yet, exposure is right on and really like the curve of the neck. Not sure what caused the lines in the BG but easy to correct with either blurring or cloning

[Bill Dix]

Lovely image. Great detail and color, and the bg looks great to me. OK, a few lines which should be easy to take out. (I'm not up on Alfred's blurring technique, but I sometimes use the clone tool at low opacity to deal with similar issues; I'm sure the blurring is a better approach.) Great ruffled neck, and the "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" look in his eye.

[Oscar Zangroniz]

Beautiful BG, great exposure, and details on your subject. Do agree that a little more room on either sides would take it over the top.
Regards