Trumpeter Swans

[Andrew McLachlan]

I think this one belongs in OOTB due to how I processed the original file.

Here is one from several years ago. Shot with a D70. I should never have even shot this one, due to ugly white skies, but back then I didn't know any better. The original capture shows ugly white skies, birds with washed out detail and the birds are in the upper most corner of the composition. I decided to play around a little.

In ACR, I moved the black slider to 100, temperature to 13,750 and tint to +26. In CS4, I opened up Viveza 2 and put control points on each bird and decreased the brightness slider to -100 and then put a control point on the background and increased the "warmth" slider until it look like this. Once finished with these adjustments, I moved the birds to a more appealing location within the composition without cropping the image.

I probably should have deleted the image long ago, but learning new things may have saved it?

Look forward to comments.

[Kerry Perkins]

Andrew, this was a good learning experience and you did a good job of salvaging the image. While it is always best to start with a high-quality capture it is good to experiment with an image and see what you can do.

I like the colors you ended up with and your (re)placement of the birds works well. Would be stronger with a better wing position (down) for the rear bird, but I like it as presented.

[denise ippolito]

Andrew, I agree with Kerry, this is a perfect image to try your hand at these adjustments. You have done a great job w/ the sliders and creating a silhouette look. For me I might even go a bit darker on the swans. I think that better wing positions as noted by Kerry would work well here. But they do seem to be gliding along. Nice save!:)

[Paul Lagasi]

Andrew...people who've seen me post in here over the last few years know I love to try to save an image....very well done with this one...Both Kerry and Denise commented on the wing..hope you don't mind I made some changes. Gives you an idea how much of a difference that wing makes

I may not have the wing at the right angle..did this fairly quick...

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks for comments everyone. Thanks Paul for wing fix I'll give that a try. It does look better with more wing showing. Much thanks.

[Susan Candelario]

Nice pp work and save Andrew.