Hello, all. It's been a while since I've been able to participate. It's great to see the hits keep flowing!
I was amazed how quickly my PS skills atrophied without regular use.
This image was taken at Gatorland in Orlando. I had not seen young Wood Storks before this, and found them to be very attractive birds. The plumage on head and neck is soft and fluffy, unlike the crusty adults. :)
Very nice COMP, exposure, and colors. Love the eye contact, head angle, feet details. You really can't tell the flash was used, just nice range of tones on the feathers. Congrats!
This is quite clean and lovely, and oh so soft. The catchlight from the flash is too large and the image has a strong blue cast. I did some eye work and got rid of the blue cast for the repost.
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Beautiful pose Dan and love the up stretched wing position. Lovely composition too with good exposure. Very nice repost Artie. Many thanks for sharing Dan.
Dan, this is such a nice pose of this young wood stork, with sharp detail of the plumage. Beautiful soft light. I happen to think the adults are pretty too, but I can understand that not everyone agrees with me! Artie's repost improved an already lovely image.
Thanks, all, for the kind words and critique. Artie nailed the color correction. I think I overlooked tweaking the white balance / color temp when converting the image - told you I was rusty. ;-)
The eye was originally steel from the flash, so I toned it down a lot but, I agree, not enough.
I have grown to love adult Wood Storks too, esp. in flight. The dramatic black and white contrast and their overall "storkiness" is very appealing to me. These little ones were a step above, though!