Osprey

[JohnC]

I took this photo back in February at Bolsa Chica. It was a good day as the Osprey finally did more than sit there while I watched him. During about a 40 minute wait he stretched his wings a few times and finally launched. As you can see, my vantage point was head on.

I decided I wanted the image without the tree branch he launched from. It was rather painstaking using my old, last perpetual version of LR. But after revisiting it multiple times, I'm reasonably happy with this version.

I know there is a lot of debate on what is or isn't proper when it comes to editing photos. My thoughts are this....As long as it isn't photo journalism and as long as you're willing to tell people what you did, you should do whatever you want.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is great John, and for this sort of image, you don't need to justify what you did in processing. It either looks realistic or not.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the image I see in this frame - it looks entirely realistic for my eyes.

The only problem I have with this image is that I didn't take it

 

[JohnC]

Thanks Ben and Alan. At my stage in life and my level of ability, other than respecting nature I pretty much just do what I enjoy. Although I never add anything to an image. I only try to clean up what I can.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Great job, John.

 

[JohnC]

Thank you Douglas.

 

[JimFox]

This is really cool John! I didn't know that these were in Bolsa Chica.

As for the editing, for the most part I don't know that removing something from a photo to clean it up will bother any of us here. As you noted, it's when adding to a photo that sometimes that would be too much. So good work on removing that, especially if you were using an old version of LR, that in itself I would declare almost a miracle.

 

[JohnC]

Thanks Jim. Osprey are pretty common in Bolsa Chica. Problem is they usually just sit in the tree when you wait for them. Although I got lucky and actually captured one in flight with a fish in his talons last fall. I think I may have posted it here.

Yeah, LR, especially the old version 6 has a pretty poor clone/heal process. I moved to Fuji for my landscape stuff last year at which time I moved from ON1 to Capture 1 which I like a lot. But I bought the Fuji only version which was fine until I decided to buy a Tamron 100-400 for my D7200 body last fall. So now I shoot wildlife with the Nikon and landscape with the Fuji. As such it's either LR or ON1 for the Nikon and I decided to go with LR. ON1 has it's own issues I no longer want to deal with. I may break down and bite the bullet for the multi camera version of Capture 1. But that won't be until the next release at the earliest.

 

[Jim Dockery]

Great shot and good work with the editing. Most of the bird shots posted here have some such editing I think.

 

[JohnC]

Thanks Jim. I imagine there is a lot of it in all photography these days. I think what annoys me the most is when someone makes a composite image from two totally different photos but doesn't say so. It's still creative but you didn't take a "photo" of the image I'm seeing.