Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
I was looking for eagles feeding on a halibut carcass and as driving away, disappointed, looked into the forest where I had seen a nesting area a few years ago.
Busy background - any suggestions?
Nikon Z6ii
Nikkor Z 100-400 with 1.4 TC
560mm
1/1600 sec
f8
Processed in LRC basic settings
Hi Daniel, I see a lot to like in this image. Nice sharpness and exposure on the bird with an intriguing head turn. Well caught. I see the background as adding environmental interest. I especially like the cones on the bottom of the frame. The large branch behind the bird’s head is a tad distracting to me but overall I see these elements balancing out fairly well. I’d say this is a nice keeper as is for me.
I would agree with Allen Sparks’s comments. Everything seems to fit together nicely . The heron stands out well and shows good detail. A very nice environmental shot.
Thanks to both. of you for your remarks. I thought perhaps the background was too busy or distracting. I didn’t think there was much I could do with editing to change that so it looked real.
I agree – a nice image with very nice detail on the bird. Seeing a heron in a tree is unusual and interesting. It would be good to leave more room for the virtual feet, if possible without major distractions.
The broken branch coming in from the right would be easy to remove, or at least make it disappear behind the darker foliage. Its abrupt end catches my attention. The other branches don’t bother me, but I might try to soften the broken branch at the top left.
Herons in trees are great! This is a terrific shot. Mine aren’t nearly this good, but I can never resist. The only thing funnier is a turkey in a tree. With a little cloning or object removal in Photoshop, you could probably get the biggest and most distracting branches to disappear pretty easily. I’m continually surprised at how good the tool is. But the lovely spruce boughs should stay. They are a nice touch and unusual.
Hi Dan. The background doesn’t bother me, but as Diane mentioned, a bit more room at the bottom for the feet would be good if you have it. It’s very easy to chop off the feet when photographing the waders because we tend to want to center the head and I, at least, still have to make a very conscious effort not to do that.
Like everyone else, I like the tree as background here.
Thanks to all. I posted an edited version incorporating your suggestions. Leaning curve for PS is steep for me.
Hi Dan. It’s steep for all of us. I can see where you did the cloning in the upper left. This looks like you did a copy and paste instead of using the cloning brush (sometimes referred to as the rubber stamp because that’s what the icon looks like on the tool bar). The advantage of the clone tool is that it’s a brush. You can control the hardness of it (I usually have that slider set to zero) and the opacity of it (depending on what I’m doing, that varies).
You locate a good area that you want to copy from to put on top of the ugly area, hold down the [alt] key and click and that becomes the source for your cloning. Move your cursor to where you want to cover up something and click and drag to paint the source over it. Since your opacity isn’t 100%, you’ll keep doing it until you get the effect you want. You can change your source area at any time, if it looks like that will help.
There are lots of video tutorials for this stuff and you can get basic photoshop video classes pretty easily as well. I took a live class through work, but it wasn’t until much later that I started picking up on the finer aspects of it.
Thank you for the instruction. I used content aware fill to make those changes and was not satisfied. I will try your method. I am watching a PS course by MattK.
Lovely image of this beautiful bird. I too like the background for it’s environmental interest. With the distractions removed like other have said, this would be a wonderful image. Matt K. is a great teacher and he does a great job at teaching beginners. I learned PS from YouTube videos. I learned PS mostly from Blake Rudus. I joined his f64 elite website. I thinks it’s now about $19 a month. He has a 30 day class that teaches the basics of PS and many more wonderful videos on things like color theory. Worth the money if you really are interested in learning PS and you can easily leave whenever you want. Anyway, good job on this composition.
Hi Daniel
Not a bad consolation prize, I so really get to photograph Great Blues in a tree. Overall I think this is a very good photograph.
Peter
Thank you. A few years ago I was photographing at Dungeness Bay and there were 5 GBH all perched in the same tree. I didn’t realize that was unusual until recently, since until this time, I had never seen it. again. I think I still have the RAW photo of that - will try to find it.
