Bathing Beauties

These birds look just like bathing beauties stepping into the water daintily. I just love Flamingos – they are so much fun to watch and photograph. Took this image of some Flamingos a while back at the Jacksonville Zoo and did not think it was that great. After watching a couple videos on On1 Photo Raw 2018 (see sidebar for website link), I decided to give it a go and see if I could get this image to look better and I was pretty pleased. When I did a Fun Photoshop blog on sharpening (see my Comparing Some Sharpening Techniques blog), I mentioned how good both On1 Effects Dynamic Contrast and Sharpening filters were. Well once again, I am pretty pleased with the results. If you have On1 software, check out Colby Brown’s video on Top 5 Tips for Wildlife Photography where he discusses how to use these filters. Then the rest of the image was post-processed in Photoshop. A stamped layer set to Hard Mix blend mode at 6% Fill Opacity was used to add an overall sharpening to the image (this was also mentioned in my sharpening blog). A Spotlight Layer set to Overlay blend mode and white was painted on the feathers (see my How to Add a Spot of Light blog.) Then a little vibrance was added using the Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer – learned this nifty trick from Denny Tang in his Vibrancy Masking Photoshop Tutorial video. Nik Viveza 2 was used to direct the focus, a Black and White Adjustment Layer set to Luminosity blend mode at 36% layer opacity, and a darken/lighten layer to emphasize the eyes and beaks a little. and a Matt K vignette (see my How to Create a Subtle Vignette blog). I might add that I used Artistic Profile 03 in the new Lightroom update to begin working on this image. I love it when I try out a new technique and it works really well……Digital Lady Syd