The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I love shooting ducks (with a camera) and the colors on these guys were amazing. They flew around the boat launch area in a big arc and I was able to follow them handheld.
Specific Feedback
This is a crop from a larger image but the other ducks were more spread out and less in focus. I wasn’t sure where to crop this… I can post the original if it would be helpful.
I blurred the background with the Neural Filters in Photoshop, that seemed to work pretty well. I can’t get my head around the select and mask/blur background process completely.
Technical Details
Fuji X-H2S, 1/2000s, f/8.0, ISO 1000, 600mm
I was panning as these ducks flew by our location on the boat ramp and feel lucky the focus turned out so well. Processing in Lightroom with DXO PureRaw and Photoshop for the background blur, and a little denoise in Topaz afterwards.
Critique Template
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Great job getting this bunch all so nice and sharp, Debbie. I’m guessing you clipped the tail on the right bird on the shot, so there’s not much you can do without resorting to AI or some fancy cloning from one of the others (which might work well). I do think adding a little canvas on the left would be helpful. It works as a crowd not to have too much room to move into but I think a little bit would be nice.
I posted the original uncropped one - I have no room on the left and don’t want to use generative AI there unless I really need room. On the right, it was hard to pick where to crop.
Hi Debbie: I see why you cropped where you did, but I do think there’s another solution that might work without resorting to AI. I downloaded your original and added some canvas on the left. I cleaned up the miscellaneous stuff the same way you did and also removed the two birds on the right to clean that area up. Then I copied a chunk of the stuff on the right and pasted it in the area I’d added on the left. All that was left to do was some light cloning along the seam to smooth the transition and cropping the excess off the right.
I’m sure others can do it better, but here’s what my effort looks like. I didn’t mind the trailing birds being a bit out of focus as the leading pack grabs all the attention.
@Dennis_Plank Oh tha’s interesting. I’ll try another version but I want to keep the one I have without additions/cloning just in case of contests. Thank you!
Wonderful capture!! And a wonderful job by @Dennis_Plank! (I think we’re entitled to as many versions as we want to make, these days.) An alternative to generative fill, if you don’t care for the “AI” part of it, is the old content-aware fill.
Dennis’s work helped the comp tremendously, There are quite a few ways of making a viable solution. More space on the left is easy. Cloning out the overlapping duck rather than clipping off one of the duck’s tail might be worth a try as well. Great color and always try to get the optimal comp within reason. Well done and you can never have too many ducks…Jim
Hi Debbie, great to get this kind of sharpness throughout on the ducks. I like Dennis’ composition and you could do something similar using Jim’s idea to just clone out a partial duck on the right after cropping. Nice catch!
Debbie, I couldn’t resist creating my own version of a crop. By the way, I love the subject. I did use generative fill. I noticed there seemed to be a loss of detail in the tail feathers of the female at the bottom of the frame; at one point, they blend into the background. The uncropped version has detail there. I’m wondering if blurring the background is what contributed to it. I understand that generative fill may be a forbidden tool, but copying, pasting, and blending is really a harder way to either clone in more background or paste it in. AI is doing pretty much the same thing, but with more sensitivity to the scene. Just my two cents worth. I say that after doing what @Dennis_Plank did many, many times in the past.
Here is my humble attempt at cropping and filling. I might remove the out-of-focus male at the bottom. Please take all this with a big grain of salt.
@Barbara_Djordjevic I used the Neural Filter to blur this one. I’ll make another version (yours is great) taking into account the comments here. Thanks!
Looks good to me. My feeling, for visual weight, is to take just a bit off the top and a little more than that off the left. But that’s certainly a personal opinion. No science behind it.
I like this composition, Debbie. A very minor nit: the content aware fill has a nasty habit of creating patterns of repeated features that our minds are quick to pick up on. A little work with the clone or remove tool can break those up pretty easily.
