This is the same dark GBH that took off from the cliff in my other shot. We followed it to where it landed on the lake shore. Then it was off again. Poor thing just wanted a few minutes to fish. Eventually we let it alone, but not before I got one more take off shot.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any processing tips are welcome.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Handheld in the boat which wasn’t terribly still.
Lr processed for some initial adjustments to exposure and white and black points. Some sharpening. Then into Photoshop for an intense masking session to isolate the bird against the background so it could be blurred without interfering with the bird too much. Finally found a video that outlined a way to remove the bird using CAF and blurring the resulting image layer. Then you add the bird back in and use white and black brushes to finesse the mask made by selecting the bird. Phew. It was a finnicky job, but the best I managed. Also did a little dodging under the wing so you can see the feathers better. A little more local adjustments in Lr and a little crop and it was done. At least I think.
Excellent!! The bird is very well-defined against the BG and the blurring doesn’t look at all obvious. Nice pose and good handling of the light.
Another way to blur a portion of an image and hold back on a selected area is to use Field Blur, in the Blur Gallery section. For reasons unknown to mortals like me, it won’t blur across a selected boundary, as Gaussian Blur will. You can accept a blur from a central point or you can place points at different areas with different amounts of blur.
Interesting about Field Blur. I’ll have to give it a try. This was my 4th attempt to mask and blur and by far the best one. The feet and legs were the hardest parts in a way. Taking the bird out of the blur layer with CAF is a neat idea and the same instructor uses a different way to expand and shrink masks and that worked pretty well, too.
