Thursday, September 17, 2009

If It Looks Like A Duck...

Sorry that this photo isn't all that great.  For me, it was tricky to edit.  I took it this past June when the class I was doing my internship in went to a nearby park during the last week of school (I mistakenly wrote 2008 on it). 

The water in the little lake is brownish as it appears in the photo.  I wish it had been blue or even blue-green; it might have made the picture a little nicer. 

I didn't do any cropping on this, but I did play with the colour some.  I'm sure it can be fixed to look much nicer.  Also, the original shot didn't have any catchlight in the duck's eye, so I added a little one.  I have no idea if the procedure I tried was the correct way for that, but it worked.  Thankfully, tonight, while looking through the posts on Twitter, Digital Photography School (link is on sidebar) had an article on fixing up eyes in photos.  It was actually a little video, and I watched it to see what they did; one of the steps they did was to fix or add catch light in the eye.  I'll have to watch it again and try it on PSE again so I can practice that procedure.

I plan on going to the same location to get more shots of the fall foliage when it's out, and hopefully I can get more (and better) shots of the ducks.  I'm going to see if my best friend wants to go along and bring her daughter as well.  I'd love to try my hand at doing some portraits of them with the trees as a backdrop.  I've never really done portraits (though with my friend Michelle, another photographer who is fantastic with the hobby, let me try taking a few of her this spring and we got one really good shot), but I don't want to limit myself in subjects.  Besides, I have to learn some time.  Not sure if this will happen, but I'll talk to her about it this weekend and maybe make some tentative plans.

In the meantime, I do have some shots from last fall that I'll work at and post here as well.  I might even use one for my next post.  But, until then, happy snapping!