Nice, Matt. The out of focus highlights in the background are a bit of a distraction, but not too bad. You got good exposure on the bird, despite the backlight. Rotation to a portrait aspect might have caught all those legs, but I’ve found that unless the body is designed for it or there’s a vertical grip available, that’s an awkward thing to do.
A portrait crop would let you get rid of some of the distracting background, but it would also make the cut off legs even more obvious.
Almost the exact same pose and angle. That’s amazing. It is a bit tight. but I still think it works better, particularly if you could get rid of the vertical out of focus thing along the left side which gives the illusion of moving that side in.
Hi Matt, yes, I like the second (vertical) shot better. While we would typically want the sun behind us, you have captured details in the shadows on the bird which isn’t always easy. You might try taking out or toning down some of the background highlights and removing the vertical on the left as Dennis suggests. Removing the BG highlights may be difficult though - I usually start with the Remove tool in PS to completely remove items.
I took a pass at removing some of the more distracting elements, but my Photoshop skills could use some refinement! I might come back to this one once I’ve learned a bit more - I couldn’t find a nice way to remove more of whatever that is on the left of frame.
You did pretty well, Matt. It does take some time to get used to these tools-then they change them! The remove tool sometimes works extremely well and other times botches it completely. The clone or rubber stamp tool as Jim Zablotny likes to call it, is an old reliable because it gives you such complete control and it’s definitely worth spending some time figuring it out and practicing with it.
