More pelicans

[purplehaze]

Yeah, I know, I have a lot of pelican shots. What can I say? They are accessible. I've been messing about with Luminar again, and would be grateful for your feedback on these.

#1


#2

[Shadowman]

Nice set, good timing.

[Wavelength]

Looks like an angel...so beautiful

[Rufus]

Both are very good shots in my opinion.

#1 - I like sky being visible, but am not keen on the trees. It is normally bright areas that attract the eye, but I find the dark area within a pale background has a similar effect in this case. Given the symmetrical shape of the wings could the "thirds" line be abandoned in this case with 3 x 4 crop? The foreground rock would break up the symmetry nicely.

#2 - I prefer the seperation between the feet and rock in #2 as well as the wing shape; also the texture on the body.

I would be interested to read what others think about the horizontal strips at the top of the frame as I am in two minds about them. The image needs the height above the subject, but might be less interesting if the strips were cloned out?

[Geoff F]

Second image looks best to me. Perhaps a fraction noisy in the water area but not serious; although I would be tempted to run over that part with a light blur brush or do a bit of selective noise reduction on just those areas.

Probably, I would crop very slightly tighter on the top to remove the topmost blue band. The second one could remain but it should be fairly easy to clone out if you wanted to remove it.

[purplehaze]

Thanks Nandakumar, David and Geoff. Here is a rework of #2; let me know if you still find the water noisy, Geoff. I had applied a global details filter that I made selective to affect only the bird, but honestly I don't see much difference; I think the AI Enhance feature in Luminar might be counting for something, but the software is so slow rendering when I switch between on and off that it is hard to tell.

More work has come in, so that is all I have time for now, but I appreciate your suggestions and will see about getting rid of the trees in #1. Fwiw, the sky is fake, but it seems no one noticed, so there's that.

#3

[Geoff F]

Looks better to me, Janis.

[Chataignier]

I like the first, mainly for the wing position, but the trees are distracting to me as well.
Edited version of #2 is better I think.

A very strange bird is the pelican : it's beak can hold more than it's belly can.