After an hour or two of trying to get a shot of a bird in flight, I finally came inside with a memory card full of cloud pictures and random other useless photographs. Among them, I found this shot, which turned out to look decent with a LOT of editing.
First off, this is a small piece of a bizarre picture involving clouds, lines, and out of focus tree branches. I had taken it quickly (the bird was the subject, but I was far away and it was very small even at maximum zoom... when I came closer, it flew away) so I would have SOME photograph of a bird to show for my time wasted, even if it was bad... lol.
I first resized a little, then cropped out the part of the picture that I wanted to use, ran it through NeatImage to get rid of lots of noise, and cloned out some icky branches/leaves. Next I used hue/saturation to colourize the photo and blurred, dodged, and burned the cloudy background to make it more smooth. At some point, I used Curves to fiddle with the light levels.. then I sharpened and added the border, and that was that.
This was certainly different for me. First time I've ever gotten rid of trees and kept power or telephone lines!
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You got another 10 from me. I've given you an average of 7.25 for 8 of your photos. I knew I added you to my favorites for a reason. Great work as usual!
Great simple composition makes this shot very interesting. The great background of the sky really helps to make the silhouette of the bird stand out. One thing that IMHO may make it even better is cropping out the bottom power/telephone line. It would give a better balance.
My only 10 of the challenge. Silhouettes can be used so effectively in conjunction with a minimalist composition and you've really played that to your advantage. The wires are placed perfectly in the frame to keep balance and the bird's silhouette is very sharp and perfectly sideways. This is a really great shot!
I like your idea, your silouette, and your placement. I would very much prefer that you had removed the other three electric lines. I don't think that they help you at all. Thanks for sharing.
Nice bird silhouette. I think the bottom two wires could have been cropped off and the picture would have been more effective. The color scheme is nice.
IMHO the bottom lines are not needed elements and detract from the true subject of the shot. Without them you have a much cleaner and more impactful composition!
TC
I don't think the border compliments the shot (perhaps a thin, dark one??) Composition is interesting - I like the use of parellel lines and negaive space. Overall a bit static.
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