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.

Portfolio Image Size

I need to decide what size I want my final portfolio images to be presented and printed off as. The smallest we can choose is 8 x 6 inch and maximum of A3 size. I want to use a size that will help really show off the photo so my initial thoughts are as 8 x 10 inch (approx A4). I will discuss with Steve on what he feels would be the best size for my images too. I feel that 8 x 6 would be slightly too small and am tempted to try A3 as the images are quite large in regards of file size and the Canon 500D (the camera I used at the start of the course) takes up to 15MP images and my new Canon 550D takes up to 18MP images so they images should stand up to being taken up to A3 however as some of the images will be cropped in photoshop this may show up if blowing the image up too much.

Portflio Images first attempt

Well the time is here to decide on the 12 images I am going to use for my portfolio. Over the last few months I have taken a lot of pictures for the course and have a lot more confidence in using my camera not only for composing shots but also what settings to use and when. I have also tried using fill in flash an seen what results I can get from that.

Trying to choose 12 images has been a struggle as being critical of my own work trying to find 12 images I am happy with has been a struggle. Also images which I thought may have been good are let down with things such as poor composition, wrong focal points and twigs casting shadows. Some of these issues can be addressed in photo shop so hopefully these issues can be put right.

I sat down with Steve at the last lesson and went through my images to try and select a final 12 (we got to 16) and some of these will need some work in photoshop to get rid of unwanted shadows and twigs however some only need a small amount of cropping.

I think the main difficulty with choosing Natural history (Wildlife) is the fact you do have to be in the right place at the right time. I think I have lost count how many good photo opportunities I have missed due to being stood the wrong side of a branch or just as you get a bird in focus it flies off.

The Pictures below are the first attempt to narrow my final image count to 12. I know there are 16 images below but this is because with some of the like the squirrel we want to see which image will look better once slight changes in photoshop. I do also have a few more images that I want to look at with Steve so the final 12 may alter slightly.

I will go through each photo in detail as I go through it in photoshop.

Small Birds in flight.....missed

One of the shots I wanted to capture for my Final portfolio is of a small bird coming into land and trying to capture this will fill in flash to make the wings motionless. I set off yesterday with this in mind to try and capture this shot. I took with me the following equipment.

• Canon 550D
• Canon 100 - 400 lens
• Canon Speedlite 430exII flashgun
• Tripod
• Wireless shutter release
• Bird food
• Camouflage netting (to cover all the equipment up)

Firstly when I arrived at the site I had an issue as all the feeders were emptied and thrown about on the floor and the area looked vandalised. Despite this I managed to tidy the area up and get the feeders up. I also filled up the feeders as much as I could with the food I had brought with me. I then set up the camera pointing at an area by the feeders took some test shots to check light levels and ensure the flash was not set too bright. After this I moved behind the hide and waited I knew it may take some time for the birds to come back but after a while they started to appear. Unfortunately despite my patience only one bird cam near the feeder my camera was trained on however I missed the shot I was after. Also hindering me was the two local cats that seemed to come into the area at regular intervals. I realised it was not going to be my day for capturing this shot so packed the equipment away and went to stalking birds again. This time however as the day was slightly dull I left the flash on the camera and decided I would use fill in flash for handheld shots.

I again did a few test shots to gauge the effective range of the flashgun then set about trying to get some different species. Although not leaving myself much time for this did manage to get a few shots of a Blue Tit and Reed Bunting and was quite happy with the results as the flash enabled me to use a higher shutter speed and also allowed to birds to stand out more in the photos compared to not using flash. I am keen to try this again although not having much time left on the course will focus on getting the 12 images for my portfolio edited before changing any.