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Shore Birds ICM
#BIRDS#ICM
Pierre Desautels PRO
12 days ago

Hi, I submitted a ICM image of the same beach a few days ago and it was "not accepted". I took a second image of the shore bird at the beach. This a ICM image of the shore bird at the beach pan horizontally ovelay with a sharper image to highlight the shore bird. I wanted to create and high key image that I could print and would post well on a beach house. Also, I don't do high key images too often and wanted to get away from my usual boring beach vacation shot. technical details...

24mm, 0.4 sec exposure, F5.6, ISO 100, 10ND filter. Let me know if you have any suggestions (may be a different crop?) before I submit to curation. thank you in advance

 

Steven T CREW 
12 days ago — Senior critic

Pierre,

 

Thanks for sharing the photo with us.  I think it would be a good one for a large framed print in a beach house.  On screen, though, the birds are quite small and it's hard to appreciate the difference between the sharp ones and the overall blur.  My suggestions are to try more blur for the background, add a bit more contrast, and a closer crop. 

 

The background blur was done on a duplicate image by selecting the sharper birds with Photoshop's 'Quick Selection' brush, then inverting that selection with 'Select>Inverse', then adding blur to the background with 'Filter>Blur Gallery>Path Blur'.  The duplicate image was then

layered with the original so that the half-blurred birds could be recovered by brushing back with the Eraser tool. 

 

The crop is approximately 16:9.  I think that panoramic look suits the subject and blur theme.  The bottom photo had a bit of blue added to the sky. 

 

Just suggestions. 

 

. . . .  Steven, senior critic, and fellow Canadian eh. 

 

 

Pierre Desautels PRO
11 days ago

Steven,

 

I like the crop you suggested much better than the one I had in the original image. I also find that more blur is more "dramatic" however I'm a bit reluctant to use the blur tool just because its a ICM image and if I wanted more blur I could have pan the camera at a faster rate of increase the exposure time otherwise I could have done the entire image on photoshop. Ok Ok... you can call me a purist! That said I likely have one the of 50 or so shot that were close to the Photoshop blur that I could use. That would allow me to keep a bit of definition in the wave.

 

Still, I like the edit you suggested and will work toward getting something close. BTW... I was reluctant to use a 16:9 crop for sending to curation since I fell (may be wrongly) that it does not help the image if someone use a phone or ipad to curate. I could be completely out to lunch on this. 

 

Below was my other shot that was "not selected" probably for the same reasons i.e. crop, blur and composition.