Naming the final Images

Here is a copy of the final 12 images I have selected for the final portfolio. These have all been put through photoshop and edited (apart from the Coot where I have not even cropped this photograph).

To see all images Pre and post photoshop click here.

Below each image is the name I have given the image and a brief reason why.

"White Bearded King"

I felt this describes the king of the jungle very aptly in this photograph.

"Sitting on the Fence"

A well known saying that seems to go well with this photograph.

"Plodding along"

A descriptive word that describes how a Coot moves on land.

"Looking Back"

One of the harder ones to name so just thought I would describe what the Chaffinch is doing.

"Hidden Giant"

At first glance it may not be clear what is in this picture and I think the title clearly describes what is happening.

"Hidden Jenny"

A shot of a Jenny Wren hidden in the bushes where you have to look hard to find them.

"Great Little Splash"

A Great Crested Grebe making a small splash with his beak so thought this was a great short description.

"Eyes in the Trees"

I felt that this really helped set the scene as there will be more grey squirrels watching you in a wood than you will see.

"Eagle Eyes"

I really liked the bright orange eye of this Eagle owl so felt it only needed to have those two words.

"Dusk Hunter"

I spent a bit of time with this photo in photoshop trying to get a feeling of the barn owl flying at dusk so felt this gave a good description of what is happening in the photo.

"All Brown and Blue"

Got stuck on this one so thought I would use the main colours in the picture to describe it.

"A Robins Song"

This photograph captures a Robin singing on a branch and you can see this with the movement in the bottom beak.

Portfolio Images Final 12

I have now managed to complete my final 12 images for my portfolio and put them all through photoshop. I tried to keep the amount of photoshop work to a minimum and mostly used cropping to frame the pictures better. I have however used masks to get rid of unwanted dull spots on the photos cause by the fences / cages. I have also used the clone stamp too to get rid of straps from birds legs, twigs from trees and shadows.

To see the final 12 images both pre and post photoshop click here (I have added comments on the original photo stating what I have done and I think the subtle changes to the Lion really show how photoshop can help)

Also as part of the portfolio we need to name our images, which I have to admit is a part I found quite hard for most of my photos. The reason being coming up for a name for a lion with a white beard was easy but a Chaffinch sitting on a branch is a Chaffinch sitting on a branch. There are 2 ways to name a photo.

1. Denotation - using the word "King" to describe a picture of a King
2. Connotation - Uses the word like "King" to describe a picture of a Lion where this is known as King of the jungle

For my images i have tried to use brief descriptions to name the photos that give an idea of the picture, however not as obvious as calling a bird a bird.

The eyes have it!

After looking at my shortlist for the final 12 images I wanted to include a close u of a big cats face that I had seen earlier done by Frans Lanting which is the image below.



What I like about this picture is the way the eyes are staring at you which is something I wanted to re-create. For this I have decided to use my picture of a Sumartran Tiger I took in April in the South Lakes Wild animal park. I managed to get a shot of the tiger looking straight at me however I need to do a few adjustments to recreate the shot above. The 2 main things I want to do are.

1. Crop the photo (close in on the face)
2. Brighten the eyes

Firstly I cropped the photo till I was happy with the composition and have chosen A4 paper size for this. Next I decided to use the quick mask technique I used on the lion below. Firstly I zoomed in onto the eyes, then using a small brush masked the eyes out as shown below.

Once I had done this and selected the image I then inverted the selection so that it was the eyes only that will get adjusted. I then used the Brightness and contrast tool to adjust the eyes and just make them that bit brighter to stand out in the photo. as shown below.

Quick Mask Lion

With the lion the issue with this photo is that you can see the cage slightly in the face which is causing a slight blur to the left of the mouth as you look at the photo. To deal with this I have used the quick mask tool. This tool allows you to brush over an area of the photograph and then adjust the brightness and contrast in the selected area only.

The picture below shows the area I have brushed over and will be able to adjust separately from the rest of the image. When you select this area with the quick mask tool it will draw an outline on the image and then you must invert this selection otherwise it will change the rest of the picture and not the selected area. (as you have painted over and masked an area)

With the area now selected you can bring up any of the adjustment tools and make minor adjustment to correct the blurred area. By clicking the preview box on and off you can see the extent of any changes.

Light Levels and Colour

With the photograph of the barn owl the main things I want to change with the picture are the light levels to make it look like a dusk setting rather than day time and also remove the leather straps from the owls legs to make the shot look like a wild Owl.

To change the colour and light levels first of all I had make some layers to adjust the different colour and light levels and then combine the layers using the original to help keep the colour in the photograph.

This first image shows the layer set up to adjust the Saturation of the photo and this was also set to colourize. So firstly the image is set in black and white and then you can adjust the Hue of the photo as you can see here the top slider is set into the blue area. This gives this layer a blue tinge to the black and white image.

The issue with the picture above is you have lost all the colour from the owl in the original photo as shown below (if you look at the bottom right you can see only the original layer is visible)

By then merging these layers together you add the colour into the the black and white image with a blue hue which gives the result below.

Cropping

For a lot of images I have used for my final portfolio I have only used the crop tool. As mentioned before It allows me to compose the picture better and allows for some of the smaller birds to fill the frame more. Below is an example of a Chaffinch after I have selected a cropped area.

Photoshop Dunnock

The first image I am going to look at with Photoshop is the Dunnock. Although happy with the picture with the subject in focus and the bright blue sky there is a couple of things I ant to change to try and improve this image.

The first thing I want to do is remove the shadow and twig that is being cast over the head of the Dunnock. To do this I will need to use the clone tool in photoshop. This tool allows you to select an area of the photograph and take a copy of and then using various brush sizes brush over the area you want to mask over. You can also select the hardness of the brush to either give a hard edge or a soft edge. For the feathers on the Dunnock I selected a soft brush. I then used the "[" key and "]" to change the size of the brush. With help from Richard in the class managed to select a suitable size to cover the shadow. Below are the changes in image.

The top image shows the original image and the second shows the photo after using the clone stamp. I have also reduced the size of the twig too so it is further away from the face of the Dunnock.

The next thing I want to do with this image is crop the image to give it a slightly better composition. I think this picture will look better in A4 size so I have selected this size in the crop section. This means it will select a crop to those measurements. I then dragged the crop tool over the photo then moved it around to find the best composition see the picture below.