single photos My first photoshop...

Love the concept and composition. I find the lighting a bit too bright. The bird is a bit hot. Excellent composition. Congrats.

I love the tonality in the photograph.  Since it was manipulated the only thing I would have done is to move the bird slightly to the left so that the frame of the arch in the background does not appear to go through it's head.  This is called a merger in photographic terms.  Other than that I like the photograph very much.

Two versions--rotated the whole thing counter clockwise, as some lines didn't make sense to me as they were and then cropped. Second version same with straightened foreground line.

I could live with it either way, but I think I still like the angled line a bit more as it is less static, but would consider it over time if it was something I wanted to show others.

The only distraction for me is that there is no shadow of the bird's beak.

A pencil thin shadow from the beak would have done it for me.

That's some school where you taught! Makes the one I went to seem like a prison (no, it wasn't).
Your compositing of the bird into this building pays tribute to the organic feel that the architect created. The lighting in the 'base' image is stunning. The composited image does not look completely natural, nor unnatural. It's this kind of perplexing view that stimulates the mind. Nice work.

John, now that you have demonstrated what I already knew that you knew, I am left wondering about this comment of yours.

Well, go read the sequence again, it might help.

Based on the direction of light, the shadow of the bird is too long. From science or daily life, this is an easily identifiable fake.

It is not much of a "discussion" for me. It illustrates very well where photography is heading and gone. Once we trained to take photos, now the almost automatic cameras do the job better than humans. Photography has moved into a new art-form where more than half the job is in the computer. Just about anyone can "push the button" and take good photos today.The real trick is in the photography combined with the computer work to create good art and financially viable images. I have many. kiwino1@gmail.com

Few things more I would like to write.
When we combine two(or more) photos to create a work like this we should care for many parametres.
First the number of the lights, the position of the light(s), the direction of the light(s), the colour(s) of the light(s) and the hardness-softness of the light(s).
Second the perspective that depends on the distance between the subject(s) and the point of view.
Third the smooth cut of edges of the subjects that we will paste one over the other.
Sometimes it really helps to make a simulation of the final work with smaller scale models or with 3d software.

John, thanks for the response and the suggestion, both of which adequately satisfied my curiosity.

I really like the composition, and the composite work is very clean. The pattern of the arches reminds me of a sea shell. Best Regards.

I found this work interesting for discusion so I did some light-shadows simulations in 3d software (any 3d software can do this, I do not promote any here) and I rendered two options for you. In these two options we may see that either both shadows of wall and bird are hard (and have the same direction) or (exclusive or) both shadows of wall and bird are soft (and again of course have the same direction). So in this photo of the week in Photo.net the light-shadow of bird is too hard, it sould be softer as the shadow of the corner-wall (and they do not have the same direction, nor same colour). Here is the rendering of 3d simulation with hard light-shadows

And here is the render with softer light-shadows.

Beautiful capture.The colour tones and light are very well and the view point is admirable also.The atmosphere shown as well as possible.The rays of light showed very good.This shot is a little closed and the bird have no chance to be free here.Anyway,the shot is nice and very powerful,also.
Best regards(Bobby).

Hi, very nice photo

Love the color

Good job