A wintry image from Sri Lanka?

Took this on a school field trip with my daughter yesterday. I think it works, though am wondering about a few things (see below).




First, is it sharp enough? It was taken from a small, unstable boat so getting total clarity was tricky.

Second, I've sharpened (and boosted contrast) more than I would normally in order to address 1. Do PUF people thing this is overdone?

Third, it's quite a stark photo with the OOF cloudy sky as a backdrop. IMO - well for now, at least - I think this leads to a nicely graphic image. (My wife thinks it's like a wintry scene (leafless branches and snow behind), and I see what she means, though the beeeaters are obviously incongrous.) However, it's a fine line between success and failure in an image such as this - the question is what have I done here?

Any (feel free to be honest) feedback much appreciated!

Doc,

There's an additional thing I can see here too - some CA around some of the highlight edges: for eg. top of the bird's beak, and some of the branches. However, some post should be able to eliminate most if not all of it.

It appears (to my eyes anyway) that the image is slightly BF also, and perhaps that is why you believe that sharpness to be a little below what you would like.

Just my $0.20 worth...

I think what's missing is some light (fill flash maybe) on the bee eater, it lacks detail around the eye and under the tail, if possible without destroying to much detail I would have cropped a fair bit off the left side to remove the dead wood.But that's only as I see it!

Thanks chaps. Flash (which I didn't have beyond the weak pop up one) would have been good on the bird, you're right Don, though I'm not sure I would have liked what it would have done to the branches. I think I can get a bit more detail using fill shadows, without degrading the image - so will try that.

Will have to sort out the CAs i-berg. I don't think it is Bf. I see what you mean - but this might just be the light making the branches look more detailed. Will re-check the original (hard to tell for sure at this size).

I hope you won't mind my comments; firstly it's a great shot, but I think the branches to the right of the bird are distracting. It would also mirror the bird in the background.

I'm not sure if this is the done thing on a photography forum, talking about retouching, but in my opinion it would make a great photography an even better image.

[IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/sfl0mt.jpg[/IMG]

No problems Phil, especially when you've made such a big difference. That's much better, though possibly a little light now. What did you do, exactly? Clearly I should try something along these lines.

Not sure I understand your point about 'mirroring'.

To lighten the bird I just added a 'levels' adjustment layer and brought out the shadows and midtones a little. Using adjustment layers is good because you can go back to the file and tweek it as much as you like without ever damaging the original.

Removing the branch isn't dificult with the patch tool, you just have to use the cloning stamp to paint in a little sky over the branch where you want to cut it. The patch tool works best when it has clear area to go over. Otherwise you get some bleeding of darker colours into the patched area. Infact, you can see a little bit of that around the end of the new break in the branch. (I did it laying in bed on my laptop just using the trackpad)

Finally I just used the clone stamp again, sampling from the paler parts of the branch to make a new break.


...and by mirroring, I meant that the bird in the background is sat right at the end of a branch and by taking out the extra bit of branch, the bird in the foreground is like a mirror image of it; albeit bigger and in focus.