What to do with these photos?

largelylivin

I have well over a hundred photos of this brood of Green Heron chicks, all taken against the same background. I feel that the background is too complex and have tried various PS tricks to improve them. For one, I desaturated the photo to B&W except for the chick. That didn't turn out so well.

Here's a much more complicated approach. Am I getting anywhere good?

Harryb

Its not a issue of post processing. PS can improve a good capture but it can't save a mediocre capture.

There's no exif data but I'm willing to bet you took these late morning or early afternoon when the light is the harshest. Under these conditions you are not going to good a really good capture. You have to stop fighting the light and make it work for you.


Here's one of my images, not a wall hangar but ok.



The light came from behind me and it was after 4 PM. I used an aperture of 7.1 to keep the foreground in focus and to blur the background. The stuff in the background is normally just clutter and draws attention away from your subject. I exposed for the egrets with an EV adjustment of minus a stop and a third. Here again the subject is the bird and that's what you want to expose for.

The first two captures are OK. I would try a closer crop to get some of the clutter out of there.

zoomer

The background and light will prevent you from improving these.