Beating the Storm

[Cory Bucher]

Hope this is the right area for this but I decided to have a little fun with couple of my photos.
Obviously this is two images that were cropped to just the birds and I added the bg with a clouds render in photoshop. I then found a photo of a lightning bolt on google and made a custom brush out of the bolt. Hope you like and enjoy.

-Cory

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Cory, and welcome to OOTB! This is definitely the right place for your image. I really like your thought process and execution. A couple of things come to my mind about this one. For my eye, there is a bit too much going on. While all of the elements are visually very strong, I might use only one or two lightning bolts and separate the birds so that the wings do not touch. There is a blue/green color cast to the to osprey that you might consider neutralizing. Very nice work and I look forward to seeing more of your images here!

[denise ippolito]

Cory, Big welcome to OOTB! This is the right place for this creative piece. Nice work with the merging. As Kerry said there is a lot going on BUT It is wildly creative and fun! I might like to see a bit of clean up under the main Ospreys tail area. Nice work and I'm looking forward to more of these!!!

[Cory Bucher]

Thank you both for your very helpful suggestions. Will definitely Take these into play my next time around.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Cory, big welcome and you've definitely landed in the right place. Very creatively done and seen.

[Paul Lagasi]

Hey Cory Welcome....nice work, I am a big fan of merged images, some good advice above...thanks for showing

[Christopher Miller]

Welcome to OOTB, Cory. Very strong, dramatic image! Agree with Kerry and Denise's excellent suggestions. Nice work!

[Cory Bucher]

Thanks again everyone, much appreciated.

[kostas nianiopoulos]

at last something with real fantasy , and not just add a fractalius filter or a blury theme , i really like this strong image with the gothic mood . Maybe you goood add some blood to run from the legs of the birds , maybe from the mouth as well . Also like the lightings in the dark sky , and maybe u could add some rain , for extra mood , and the sky could be a little bit darker , that all in my opnion . Cory u really have a great image , if i was a teacher i would give u a AA' , but i am not , maybe YOU could teach me . :)

[Cory Bucher]

Kostas I love the Idea you have. I will try and play around a little more and see what I can come up with Thanks.

Update: Here is what I have come up with, thanks again for everyone's suggestions.

[kostas nianiopoulos]

verry good corry well done . It's more gothic like this way , i beleive maybe not an image for everyone , but i really like it .. :)

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Interesting work Cory. Welcome to OOTB!!! Personnaly I try to make such images appear as real as possible, and the trick is to avoid obvious giveaways that it is not. May not be your goal, but the elements are there if you wished to go that direction. A few things I noticed; the image is too chaotic;there are too many lightning bolts at once that doesn't seem very plausible, the clouds render in Photoshop is unconvicing and I would think a suitable image of clouds could easily come from your own camera, with a bit of tweaaking, and there is some sort of uncomprehensible blur? around the birds, especially the front one, that doesn't add to the image but detracts. In addition the further bird, it would seem to me, should be somewhat out of focus, not only due to depth of field issues, but the atmosphere.
Having only one focal point is generally a good idea, to avoid attention competeing elements as you have here. This would also be helped by either blurring, or at least fading the second bird.
Also I would either go completely black and white or add color to the background; the lightening should have a slight yellowish cast at least. I would also play with darkening the background considerably
I do not like the second version, even though you did reduce the lightening bolts and reduced the impact of the second bird by making it smaller; the red is distracting and the deviation from the photo quality of the first, which helps create the illusion of "reality", is gone. regards~Bill

my web site

[Cory Bucher]

Thank you Kostas, glad you like the revision.

Thanks William appreciate the well thought out critique.