Comment posted by Jerry Austin on March 28, 2014 at 12:31 PM
You succeeded. These birds can be stunning under the light right. Well done.
Registered on January 6, 2012, 651 Posts, 3448 Comments
Comment posted by Keith Bauer on March 28, 2014 at 2:20 PM
John: You did well with the challenge presented. Nice light showing the details in the starlings. While the fence isn't the most appealing perch, it is where the birds were and you did a nice job capturing them. Very nice blurred background as well.
Registered on November 20, 2003, 458 Posts, 4836 Comments
Comment posted by Rick Cloran on March 28, 2014 at 4:43 PM
Well done. I think you met the challenge. Maybe a little bit of shadows in post to open the bodies up more but the image as shown is very nice indeed.
Registered on April 6, 2004, 119 Posts, 1989 Comments
Comment posted by David Bogener on March 28, 2014 at 5:30 PM
Nice light OOF background to display these starlings against. Good color and detail in the birds. Agree the fence perch is less than ideal. Dave
Registered on October 30, 2013, 417 Posts, 1255 Comments
Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on March 28, 2014 at 7:32 PM
You caught both the iridescent plumage and the wry humor. Good work! I do think I would crop some from the bottom to a semi-pano, to lessen the impact of the perch. It's not so much that it is objectionable, there is just too much of it.
Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments
Comment posted by Dennis Plank on March 28, 2014 at 7:42 PM
Sweet image, John. You did a great job on balancing the exposure and I really like the bg. My only nit is that your fence is on a slight angle. I checked it in Photoshop and it indicated slightly under a 2 degree clockwise rotation to straighten it.
Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments
Comment posted by John Robinson on March 28, 2014 at 8:22 PM
Nice one John.
One of my favourite species- great characters ! Like it - has a good "urban feel" to it.
JohnR
Registered on March 2, 2008, 535 Posts, 2453 Comments
Comment posted by Richard Ditch on March 29, 2014 at 12:37 AM
I like this image - a nice composition with two common and widespread birds on a simple fence - something that any of us here might have seen and ignored.
You've done well finding an exposure that works for both the black plumage and the weathered fence, but I'd prefer the fence a bit darker.
So, as we discussed off-line I've done a quick tune-up, working on your larger version:
1. Selected the fence (I use the Quick Select wand in PS CS3 - easy with the clean edges)
2. with the selection active, added an adjustment layer (type doesn’t matter) and made no adjustments. Changed the Mode of the new layer to Multiply - this darkens the fence a lot. Pulled down the opacity to 75% to reduce the amount of darkening.
3. reselected the fence and added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Moved the Hue slider to the left - that brings out more of a brown tone. Used the Brightness slider to darken it down a little.
I've just guessed at what the fence might have actually looked like, of course. With the original raw file this could be double processed. Or the changes could be "painted on" with something like Perfect Effects 8, I suppose.
Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments
Comments
8 commentsOne of my favourite species- great characters ! Like it - has a good "urban feel" to it.
JohnR
You've done well finding an exposure that works for both the black plumage and the weathered fence, but I'd prefer the fence a bit darker.
So, as we discussed off-line I've done a quick tune-up, working on your larger version:
1. Selected the fence (I use the Quick Select wand in PS CS3 - easy with the clean edges)
2. with the selection active, added an adjustment layer (type doesn’t matter) and made no adjustments. Changed the Mode of the new layer to Multiply - this darkens the fence a lot. Pulled down the opacity to 75% to reduce the amount of darkening.
3. reselected the fence and added a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Moved the Hue slider to the left - that brings out more of a brown tone. Used the Brightness slider to darken it down a little.
I've just guessed at what the fence might have actually looked like, of course. With the original raw file this could be double processed. Or the changes could be "painted on" with something like Perfect Effects 8, I suppose.