Mating Dance #6 Red Crowned Cranes

[robertakayne]

For Ray Hennessy Processing.
I have processed several images of the Red Crowned Japanese Cranes Mating Dance and this is the 6th. I will leave it up to you to decide how to process it, but to start I cropped out all but the two birds that are dancing. This was taken at Tsurui Ito Sanctuary in Hokkaido Japan. I’ve seen Daniel Kordan’s photos of these magnificent birds, and somehow he gets the red crowns to show up redder, and I’d love to know how to do that. I didn’t spend a lot of time editing this photo, only enough to give you an idea of what I have in mind. Thanks for considering this photo.

Raw File

XT505619.RAF (47.8 MB)

You may only download this file to demonstrate how you would process the image. The file is Copyright of the photographer, and you must delete the raw file when you are done. Please post a jpg of what you created, explain what you did, and why you did it.

My Edit

Ray Hennessy’s edit:

[Mark_Orchard]

Hmmmm…sadly I don’t think the image is sharp enough to do a close up, detailed edit, which means being a bit more artistic, which leave me out!

I found the bird on the right to be sharper than the two fighting and I thought his/her disdain for the other two makes a good story.

[robertakayne]

@Mark_Orchard Thanks for the feedback Mark. Ray Hennessy (guest editor of NPN) did a good job of editing it. I have been putting white backgrounds on my other photos of the cranes, but I thought I’d try a black background. I will post Ray’s edit.

[Steve_Rosendahl]

I am new to digital editing. I am constantly fighting white bird hotspots.
I took on the challenge. But I failed.
It looks too much like a cartoon.
Here it is: