African Purple Swamphen

[Pieter de Waal]

A pair of courting Swamphens (Gallinules) taken at Wakkerstroom Wetlands. The filtered light through cloudcover helped with the colour on these birds. Had to reduce the picture quality to below 50% to comply with max. size and hope it has not affected the image.

50D/EF500f4+1.4/f6.3@1/640/iso400/EC-0.33 - FF. beanbag.

[Ken Watkins]

If you ignore the nusance of the grass this is a very nice shot of these beautiful birds. The lack of light has certainly helped in this case. I think that perhaps a tad more contrast and sharpening may help and if you do not mind this sort of thing you could try cloning out the worst grass.

Here is a quick go, what do you think

[Pieter de Waal]

Ken agree with your comments and the repost has certainly improved the colour, the OP looked a bit flat. I don't mind removing the grass as in this case it has helped the image considerably. Thanks for your time I like it.:)

[Ken Watkins]

Pieter,

Thanks for your thanks;)

You should get far better results from the raw.

Work large (400%) when doing the cloning I used hardness at around 50% but it was a JPEG

If you have CS4 then I used the curves preset linear contrast follwed by a round of sharpening in Smart Sharpen at 100%, 0.1, lens blur.

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

nice looking hens Pieter. I like habitat shots and while the cloning is a good effort and an improvement, I was not really bothered by the grasses intercepting the body. Well done mate. :)

[Stu Bowie]

Hey Pieter, these guys are under estimated, when it comes to colours, and you have brought out their colours nicely, with the overcast conditions. Good to see two together, and the low perspective works well.

[Jonathan Ashton]

I like the image I agree regards the contrast i wonder if you just reduced the Brightness a little it may have the desired effect.

[Pieter de Waal]

Thanks all for your comments, do appreciate them.