Bad weather Kite

[David Morison]

As is my luck I left home in good weather to drop off my dear lady at the gym and then proceed to a Red Kite hotspot, to arrive with heavy cloud and light rain. I wasn't going home without firing the shutter so I rattled off a few of some of the fifteen plus kites in the area. Most were rubbish but this one I thought was worth sharing although I have had to increase contrast and saturation and lift the shadows, plus some sharpening. Taken with AI Servo centre 15 points and Case 4, which seems to be the best under these conditions.

591A8129 by dmorison24, on Flickr

7DII plus 400mm L

David

[tesarver]

Re: Bad weather Kite

Nice detail David

Tom

[Cyberman]

Re: Bad weather Kite

Nicely captured. I like that.

[Stan]

Re: Bad weather Kite

A nice pose, shame about the sky - would you like to borrow one of mine

Stan

zxzxz.jpg

[the black fox]

Re: Bad weather Kite

sharp enough david ,but the bad weather part of it does show unfortunately .perhaps lowering the white balance to bring out a touch more blue from the sky and increasing vibrance might help,oops stan beat me as i posted LOL
complete with sensor dust spot to stan you naughty boy

[Tigger]

Re: Bad weather Kite

Stunning image David - made better with Stans editing

[Stan]

Re: Bad weather Kite

and increasing vibrance might help,oops stan beat me as i posted LOL
complete with sensor dust spot to stan you naughty boy

not a sky shot with my camera but one on a disk from one of the mags, so blame them for the sensor dust

Stan

[Tigger]

Re: Bad weather Kite

not a sky shot with my camera but one on a disk from one of the mags, so blame them for the sensor dust

Stan

Stan - I've got an image that needs this treatment but when using PS to select the bird I'm finding it doesn't work well as I don't seem to be able to make a clean selection - I'm refining the edge once selected but certainly not getting anywhere near to the quality you have - what process do you use when cutting an image and replacing the background

PS sorry to hijack your thread David, maybe you'll find this interesting

[David Morison]

Re: Bad weather Kite

Stan - I've got an image that needs this treatment but when using PS to select the bird I'm finding it doesn't work well as I don't seem to be able to make a clean selection - I'm refining the edge once selected but certainly not getting anywhere near to the quality you have - what process do you use when cutting an image and replacing the background

PS sorry to hijack your thread David, maybe you'll find this interesting

I'm more than happy to read what techniques can be applied in these circumstances, I don't have the knowledge or skills to do what Stan has. Lowering the WB probably wouldn't have helped as the sky was very grey!

Many thanks

David

[Tigger]

Re: Bad weather Kite

I'm more than happy to read what techniques can be applied in these circumstances, I don't have the knowledge or skills to do what Stan has. Lowering the WB probably wouldn't have helped as the sky was very grey!

Many thanks

David

cheers David...I've got a bird flying photo that I'm pleased with but the sky is a flat / grey as it comes

Over to you Stan - I've got the popcorn ready

[Stan]

Re: Bad weather Kite

This one was very easy as the background is totally plain and the edges of the bird well defined.

Open both images, bird and sky, in photoshop and with sky on the workspace select all, copy and close image

Edit and paste new sky as a layer (layer 1) on top of the bird, which will be the background layer and for now turn off its visibility.

With background layer selected use the magic wand tool to select the washed out sky, adding selections if necessary until all the sky is selected. Now inverse the selection so that the bird is selected, turn the visibility of layer 1 back on and you will see the selection still there. Make this now the active layer and hit "delete" - the bird is now showing against the new sky. If the edges between the bird and sky are now looking too crisp (they weren't on this one) then you can either feather the selection before hitting "delete" or use the blur tool, with a small brush and just run it round the bird to soften the edges

The whole process took about a minute but much longer to write down

Stan

[Tigger]

Re: Bad weather Kite

cheers Stan I'll have a try later, but right now I'm supposed to be gardening ;o((( better go before I'm spotted