Shot around 11:00 am near Paint branch river in College Park. Considering that some excellent seascapes/landscapes will be submitted in this challenge, I don't have much hopes with this image. Let's see how it fares in this challenge.
Post processing: Shadows/Highlights to reduce the brightness of brightly lit trunk. Curves to add contrast, Hue and Saturation, Shadow/Highlights again, Noise Ninja, cropped, resized, added white border, save for web
Statistics
Place: 45 out of 326 Avg (all users): 6.1973 Avg (commenters): 6.8000 Avg (participants): 6.0857 Avg (non-participants): 6.2593 Views since voting: 1332 Views during voting: 412 Votes: 294 Comments: 15 Favorites: 1 (view)
Thanks Ricky and Tim. Ricky, I will try your suggestion on the USM. I did use Shadow/Highlights to reduce the highlights in this image. But the log was just too bright. Luckily, I did not over-expose this image.
I think this shot meets the challenge very well. For the challenge, I know you couldn't spot edit the bark, but now you might want to try darkening some of the brighter highlights on the log to put more emphasis on the bird. For sharpening, you might want to try having the threshold at 0 when doing your unsharp mask. I like your overall composition and the colours are great.
Thanks every one for wonderful comments. Only thing I don't agree with is the *not meeting the challenge* thoughts. There are many comments about this being too sharp. I did USM with radius=1, strength = 100% and threshold=10 on an image of size 4??X620. I really need to learn how to "sharpen/not to sharpen" my images.
This shot is under-rated. Those that gave a low score because it wasn't a beach scene didn't read the challenge close enough. The composition, dof, and colors are wonderful and I gave this a 7. I would have scored it higher but it looks a little over sharpened imho.
Great job! A very pretty photo, great technical merit. There are a couple of things that made me not vote too high for this one though.
First is that the business of the bark on the tree, and the business of the bird's plummage make this a bit TOO busy overall to enjoy the quality of either the bird or the log.
Secondly, a water shot, or even a shoreline shot, does not always mean 'beach' in my opinion. And meeting the challenge, to me, is the first and most important thing, if that isn't done, then anything else is unimportant. Doesn't mean it's not a beautiful and creative shot, because in this case, it absolutely is! I do love it! I went back and forth on how to score your pic, but I do vote low for those that I don't think meet the challenge, so to be consistant, I am voting this lower than I want for the reasons stated above.
Lovely capture, seems a bit oversharpened, the harsh sunlight on the log is distracting. A polarizing filter might have toned it down a bit. Still a great photo.
Great capture, the composition and placement of the heron in the frame bisects it nicely, and makes the eye want to travel to where the fish must be. 10
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