Photo 04 - All About Contrast Pt. 2

Took this one last summer at Warwick Castle. Canon 400D and EF-S 55-250 IS

As Shot - 235mm / 376mm, 1/350th, f/5.6, ISO 800

Its a bit muted like the other, doesn't have the darks I wanted. Also I didnt like the composition as it was too similer to another I had, so as i missed the square crop, I tried that, seemed quite appealing to me. Took some empty space out of the top, filled the frame entirely.

The photo is obviously too contrasty, has too much brightness in some places, and not enough in others. When we look, we see the front of the beak, not the eye, as we probabl should see first.

You can see below how I tried to rectify this

This is the result

As you can see, the features are cool, teh background is cool, but the beak still overpowers the images too much, and the eye is too far gone. So I went to Lightrooms amazing non-destructive adjustmeant brush. To change the beak, and bring out the eye.

And here is what I got.

On Flickr

Doesn't look too natural, but it does look striking, to be honest, I could have gone about this better, maybe with curves, not sure. It would have maybe been better to adjust tones rather than get out the adjusment brush. But every photo is a leaning opertunity, and I'm quite happy with this as is. Hi Ravi :P