Connie Reinhart
May 2025 - Still Life - Courting
Original
About the Image(s)
These chickens came from a yard sale. They were irresistible. They were in a light box with a black lining. All steps were done on separate layers. I tried to fix the background using the burn tool. That didn’t go far enough. So, I used NIK CFX to darken/lighten center (mostly just darkened the edges. Not too bad. Then added a high pass filter at hard light. Merged up and added another high pass at hard light ??“ don’t know why, it just seemed to need that. Then used NIK Viveza to tone down the bright areas on the birds’ bodies. Lastly added a stroke of a light brown (taken from the wings) to make the image stand out from our background.
1 comment posted
Cuteness is what I see! I've never seen such chickens! You reinforced the good tip that yard sales are great for finding little things to photograph. I like how the orange leaves coordinate with the tan coloring of the birdies. They are great supporting subjects. I have always had bad luck with black material as a backdrop, so I'd suggest, in hindsight, a middle shade of color for the background. I did notice the chicken's feet and liked the shapes, so I'd want to be able to see them. I found the out-of-focus tails to be distracting. I usually use at least f/16 for still life, because it is easy to blur something in post editing but not make it sharper. Posted: 05/12/2025 18:09:11