For Ben and Birdman

ginger_55

This especially for Ben (and anyone else who has a bird with an amputated wing. If the wing is not enough, Ben, I have birds from today left with fewer body parts.)




And this is for Birdman, my new house: from the front. Can't see the birds? They are all around the place......



And that is just the frontyard, close in, the guest houses were further back.

And in my backyard, I built a "pond" for these Snowys, have to have Snowys.
(I know they might be a little soft, but all that water, you know, it softens you up???)



Let's skip the other snowy and go right to the best part. I bought a river with my house, I have one great backyard, don't you think? I could use a few more bird stock, though, if you care to send...........

I tried to sharpen this photo up for you, but with the river and all, the haze was really thick. Even CS2 didn't want it sharper, it is not soft.




Cool huh?? I saw that house and backyard, birdman, I thought right of you. Then the photo of the egret, well, I thought of Ben, after I stopped swearing at myself. (If Ben can do it, it must be alright???)

ginger (Now I have to find me a cleaning lady and a lawn man)

bfjr

I am flattered beyond words here.
What a great Egret shot that 1st one is and you dedicated it to me :wow
And what's a little feather cutting between friends
Seriously it maybe one of your best Egret shots yet, feather detail very good, filled the frame and all that good stuff!!

And that 2nd shot looks just like my second home Not !!
But it is a great shot love the sky and depth here, well framed by the foreground trees, really nicely done

John Mueller

Good stuff Ginger.

rutt

There is a lot to like here, especially #3. I love it as an abstract shot, bird or no bird, if you know what I mean.

OK, though, here is something you can fix. All these shots lack true rich blacks in the shadows. You can easily fix in LAB by moving the dark endpoint of the L curve inward. Or take to CMYK and steepen the K curve only until you are pusing the ink limit in the deepest shadows (a little less than 300 total for all 4 colors; you can configure the info palette to show this.)

I edited the last shot by just pulling in the dark end point of the L curve and steepening it through the midtones:





I liked #3 so much that I decided to make a special effort with it. I used shadow/highlight to recover some of the feathere detail, then took to CMYK to steepen the the black curve and get rich shadows, and finally took to LAB to increase saturation and make that lovely background even more so.







As is often the case with these kinds of things, I have made extreme edits in order to make the result more obvious and show off the technique. When you do it yourself, you may want to introduce less contrast or saturation than I have. On the other hand, the color sampler does not lie. Your deepest shadows should register 100% on the L curve or total ink of around 300 in CMYK. Otherwise the shots will look dull.

Rohirrim

Nice Shots Ginger, I especially like the first one.

ginger_55

Rohirrim wrote:

Nice Shots Ginger, I especially like the first one.

Thanks, I am not the best editor I guess, that was just put in as a joke for Ben, now I do have shots w/o heads, too. Same series, same bird. Had just arrived. I obviously did not take off when the bird did, I mean I must have held my lens still and not followed very well. Also, I had forgottent to put it on al servo.

ginger