Red Grouse 3

Hi To all,
The third Red Grouse of the series , only one more after this I promise , perched on a moss covered rock this time surveying his territory.
Any tips on how to adjust the sky so it looks more natural would be appreciated , it's shot in jpeg so I'm not sure how much scope I've got for adjustment.

Levels , Usm(100,1.0,2 x1) , Contrast , S/h , Cropped about 20mm off the lefthand side , other than that it's full frame.

Canon 350D , 17-85IS at 85mm , Hand held.

1/100th @ F9 iso400 jpeg

All comments and advice welcome

Kind regards
Andy...

Can i ask, where you in a hide? Or is this just a really friendly bird? Nice shot, but do you use Photoshop?

It maybe worth bringing the sky down as its blown to bits, and it makes the horizon look very fake to me. If nothing can be done, it maybe worth trying to clone the sky out?

Hi Paul,
No hides were used to capture this series of images , in gamekeeper speak this is know as a Rogue Male , a bird which has no fear of people , it's a totally wild bird that is incerdibly friendly , I know that some people will find it very hard to believe that this image was taken with a 17-85 lense , I would also like to add that we only spent a very short time with this bird and I firmly believe no stress was caused to the creature as it would happily feed on heather seed as we photographed it.

I agree with your comments about the horizon Paul , it really spoils what I think is a nice image , I use CS2 , but my skills are very limited.

Kind regards
Andy..

Best way to deal with the sky on days like this is simply to keep it out of the shot!

Did he attack you at all?

Hi Nick,
I know that Rogue Males can become very aggressive indeed , but he didn't attack us and was the perfect gent

Kind regards
Andy...

Sounds like you've got yourself a really co-operative subject here
Difficult to say whether the sky area could be salvaged without knowing how much detail there is in the original file.
It may have been possible to have kept a bit of detail in the sky whilst still getting a decent exposure on the bird, or at least an exposure where the detail in the bird could be revealed with careful use of curves or the shadow/highlight tool.
Another option that unfortunately won't help in this instance would have been to shoot two rapid frames in succession with a stop or two's exposure difference, with a view to later blending them.

Hi Andrew another great shot of the Red Grouse and I agree with the other suggestions which has been made.
John
Aberdeen

A great series of Grouse images-very jealous as we dont have them here-agree with other comments re the sky

Dave

he didn't attack us and was the perfect gent

..must've been the famous bottle of whisky you had with you then

Hi Nick,
We could have done with a drop or two as conditions weren't to favourable , prefer a different brand myself

Andy...

'grousies OK for a light tipple...prefer some cask strengths and organics myself

Of the series, this I like the most, super

Hi Andrew,

What a great shot of this Grouse! It is a shame about that whte sky. What i use in this case are called NIK filters. If you search NIK-filters at Google i am sure you will find the website and these digital filters incude a gradual blue filter wich works (if used with a bit of transparency) perfectly to make a sky look more natural and blue.
Try it and i am sure you will like them!

Good luck!

greetings,

Jeroen Stel

Hi to all,
Thanks for the comments and advice.

Kind regards to all

Andy...

Wow, fantastic image Andrew. Personally I'd try some cloning of the BG rather than messing with sky colours...but that's just me and I'm pretty crap in PS