I was weeding out the many rejects from my efforts to shoot Northern Harriers the other evening, and came across this one, that I found somehow appealing in an arty sort of way. It's somewhat OOTB except that I did nothing to manipulate it in PP, other than a tiny boost to contrast and saturation and tiny darkening of the eye, some NR and of course a massive crop. The Harrier was diving after a vole and disappeared into the tall grass to the point of near obscurity. This is also kind of interesting if I apply a Watercolor filter to it, but I thought I'd post the unadulterated version for comment. What's the verdict -- keep it or can it?
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good light.
D90 | 500VR | ISO 640 | 1/4000s @ f/5 | -1.0 EV | HH
I do like the artistic look to this. It really looks as if someone has painted it. However, I would have liked to see at least as much detail in the head as the rest of the body, which unfortunately is not the case. Very interesting image though.
i really like the feeling of motion the diagonals of grass give and the overall painted feeling. I wish the head was a little more detailed too - and i like the darkened eye. colors are wonderful, feels like a woven tapestry.
Definitely a keeper Bill! Agree that head detail is important here and I wonder if some selective change to the contrast in this area may help. However, going back to the image I'm thinking its pretty interesting the way it is.
Bill, any chance you have another harrier head that you could transpose here and then soften the details so it matched the blur level of the rest of the image? I think all that's missing for a successful image is a bit more head detail and using a "transplant" might just work!
The colors and degree of blur in the image are very nice...just need a little stronger head here and I think you'd have a winner. :)
Thank you all for looking. I agree -- my first reaction was disappointment that the head was buried in the grass. Interesting idea, Jules. If I get snowed in tomorrow, which is looking likely, I'll spend a few minutes playing with it; otherwise I'm probably better off going back into the field to try again.
Add one more for a little more visibility of the head. I'm not so sure I'd need detail, but it's also obscured by blurred foreground grass. As long as I'm asking for things, it would be a killer image if there were a blurred rodent running away, visible just below the harrier.
Well Jules and others, you asked for it. Here's a repost with a transplant. Sorry I couldn't come up with a Vole image to paste into the grass. Let me know what you think.
Harrier blur: keep it or can it?
