Erik in CO
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FishhawkBill wrote:
Hi Erik,
Here's my suggestion. And it is just a suggestion. Often a new viewer has no idea what you want the viewer to feel or see when all we have is a beginning image. So I could be totally off base.
First, this is a nice image. Be proud of it. Given the extreme amounts of work done after the shoot on most shots you have a good starting point.
What I did tot he image was a simple four step edit. All in photoshop.
1. I cropped it to include the lower curve of ...whatever that is. Another duck head? The reason was that by cropping there you have a nice repeated form through the image: the main duck's head, the soft curve at the bottom, the main duck's eye and the little fan of tan feathers.
2. I duplicated the image in a new layer and did a high pass filter (Filter, Other, High Pass (at 5.0) then set layer to overlay)
3. I added some red and yellow in Image, Adjustments, Color Balance (set to highlights).
4. I used the blur tool to blur some parts that were sharp in both the high pass layer and the main layer. So some parts wind up sharpened by the hi pass, others softened. Then I burned in a few light patches in the upper parts. All this focused the sharpness in the middle on the eye and the tan feathers.
For me, the color of the the tan feathers in the middle of the mostly black and white is deep enough to work but remain subtle.
Total time: about 8 minutes. I type slower than that.
Wow! Thank you very much for the comments and the description of the editing you did, that is very helpful. It also raises some questions - since I am a photoshop noob, the first one being: what made you think to use a high-pass filter/overlay? I repeated your process in photoshop, but... what exactly is the high-pass layer + overlay doing to the image to give it what appears to be more contrast/clarity like that? Playing around with it in photoshop, the effect didn't seem too intuitive. I'll see if I can't find some photoshop for photos resources on the net somewhere, there's clearly much more to think about than just levels/curves/contrast/local contrast etc.
Also, that lower curve is indeed a miscellaneous part of another duckling. That repeated shape was what made me frame the shot the way I did; I only wish the duck part in the FG were a little more in focus. There was a group of ducklings gathered in a little pile while a parent watched from a few feet away. They were amazingly tolerant and curious; one of the ducklings got up at one point, walked all the way around me, found out I was boring and went back to sleep in the pile. 
Thanks all for the kind welcome as well.
Edited on Aug 09, 2008 at 09:09 AM
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Maybe more specific questions would help - does the lower left distract for being OOF/bright? Does the interesting line I thought I saw (the kind of S-shaped curve of the duckling in front, up around the other duckling's head, over to the eye/bill) add any interest to the image or is it just a strange framing? Etc.. 
