Two Reddish Egrets (White Morph)

I really like this photo, but the combination of low light, slow film speed, and shooting hand-held have left it a little soft and grainy. Thought I'd share it anyway. I'll be leaving the country tomorrow and won't be back on-line until 11/3. See you then.

A fascinating capture of what I'm guessing is a mating dance. The grain is not a problem at all in this image, but the cyan cast is. Even for such overcast light, the cyan on the birds is too heavy. Doing an overall color balance risks losing color on the water, though. It's a dilemma unless one is willing to do selective color balancing.

This is a fantastic image of two lovely birds.

 

I worked with this image for a few minutes in PS. I adjusted curves, lowered saturation in cyan and also lessened the cyan in selective color then dinked around with the contrast and brightness. It's not what I would call perfect but the effect is, I think, somewhat better. Let me know if it's too bad and I'll remove it.

This site is slowly sliding into ultimate wackoville. I tried to download an image with the previous comments which were downloaded in twice even though I only loaded them once. This has happened to me previously and I've never been able to delete the duplicate comments in over two weeks. I will try the download one more time and if this message is repeated just ignore the extras.

Here's the corrected image, I hope!

Well, my hotel in Xian has internet access, so I'm on today anyway! Thanks for the comments. Fred, you've worked magic with the photo! I'm gonna have to learn how you did it! Thank you! John

I think the original's strong cyan in the water (especially with the grainy-ness) offers more attractive printing prospects.

But, Fred's workup really brought out the color in their beaks. Gotta keep that, no matter what.

I thought the cyan sort of interesting too in an interpretive way but it would actually have to be posterized a bit as well before it would really work for me. The bird shapes are so wonderful that almost anything could be done successfully as long as those were held.

I interpreted the activity of this pair as mating behavior at the time. This pair came and went together, ignoring others of their species in the area. The one on the left seemed dominant (probably female!). Thanks for all the suggestions. I really like what Fred did with the beaks and the highlights on the feathers and the water surface. I have a lot of things to try when I get home.

I read your comment, and re-read it again, and still, I don't know what you mean. What is it about poserization that would be necessary to make the color of the water work? As I see it, like any increase in contrast, posterization would increase the dramatic at the expense of the subtle. Seems to me that doing so would lose some lovely tonality in the water while making the water itself more prominent and pulling some attention away from the birds. What was your idea about how this could be improved?

What I think I meant is that the strong cyan colorcast introduces a bit of abstraction to the image and if I were to keep that as a positive attribute I would have to at least make it look intentional if this were my image (which it is not). I would simply play with the filters in PS to make it very obvious that I never intended the image to be completely naturalistic but more of a impressionistic effort. I am taking the liberty of making some simple changes to illustrate my meaning. Please forgive me, John, for altering your image to make my point.

It did it to me again!!!!!! No image came through and two more undeletable comments!!!! I am beginning to hate this site!

 

I am trying to download the example image again. Please forgive me if I fill your comments with more garbage.

Whoa!! Fred's alteration creates a completely different image than John's and I really like it. Maybe an assignment for some future month should be alterations on a theme.

No problem, Fred. Feel free to experiment all you want. I'm continuing to learn from the dialog and your examples. Thanks. I am in the Gobi desert today at an internet bar in a small town.