Anhinga Sunning

[Judy Howle]

I made this Thursday at Noxubee Refuge. It was my first time to see anhingas sunning! They were far away, especially this one, near the other side of the lake, and I didn't even spot it until I'd been photographing a closer one for several minutes. I used Topaz Clean on it and painted out some of the "stuff" in the background but chose to leave the cypress tree tops and a couple of trunks so it wouldn't just be a black void there.

[Paul Lagasi]

Very nicely capture image, nice effect..I may have rotated this just a bit to the right. well done

[denise ippolito]

Judy, Nice effect. They are special birds to see. I might consider a crop off the top but let's see what others say.

[John Storjohann]

Hi Judy. I'll echo what has already been said....a slight CW rotation (from looking at the water line)...and a possible crop from the top. In fact, this would make a really nice pano...cropping down to just above the BG logs behind the Anhinga...IMHO. Just thinking out loud...nicely done.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Judy, I like the crop from the top idea but would hate to lose the foliage at the top. Could you select the top portion and move it down into the dark section above the Anhinga? You'd have more of a pano but would preserve that part of the image.

[Judy Howle]

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. I don't think it's very crooked looking at the little stick in the water and the ripples in the reflections below the bird and stump, but I rotated it a tiny bit so as not to lose the foliage at the top. I took Cheryl's suggestion but I used content aware scale to move the top section down 100 pixels which I had thought about doing before but didn't get to it. It does look better without so much black in the middle. Denise, I didn't want to remove the top foliage and I think it looks OK now.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Judy, looking at the reflections is the proper way to determine level in an image like this and I don't see a rotation problem at all. You can't even see the water line, as it is obscured by shadow (it is not the shadow line, but a bit above that). I like the image and think the different aspect ratio is interesting. I might tone down the foliage and tree trunk on the right just a bit.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Judy, lovely bird. I hope see one someday. Nicely filtered scene also. If it were mine I think I would clean up the stuff floating in the water. Nice work!

[Judy Howle]

I thought I uploaded the reworked image but it's not there so I'll try again.

Thanks Kerry and Andrew. I had cleaned up some of the trash in the water in the reworked image but not enough time to do all of it. I did tone down the sunlit foliage and trunk a good bit already as well as the white on the bird.