Blackbird

[groovesection]

Wildlife photography is really not my thing, However i was out today and noticed this blackbird perched literally 5m from me.
It was very overcast so i had to sacrifice ISO to get a fast shutter speed on my sigma 18-125 f4-5.6

ISO 2500? (apparently) 1/100 sec at f6.3 - 125mm FL - a few minor tweaks in CR

[Bobobird]

You are showing a thumbnail and it is hard to tell much from it.

Please check the how to post a pic thread that is at the top of this forum for guidance.

[groovesection]

Sorry Bobo,
Fixed it now

[daniaw]

I see the point of interest of the pict is not clear because of the background, may be you can use the wider aperture to get blurry background or look for another angle. just my opinion

[groovesection]

Very valid points, Only had my camera 4 weeks so still learning.
My lens at it's widest only does f3.5 and the bushes in the background were only 50cm or so behind the bird so any bokeh was always going to be minimal
Thanks for the advice though my friend.

[pnodrog]

Hi Anton you can blur the background using photoshop. It comes up reasonably well. Hope you don't mind me playing with it. I over sharpened it bit to much but you should get an idea of what can be done.

[groovesection]

Hey Paul, That is very impressive, I like it!
Please forgive my ignorance though, I know how to apply a blur effect in PS but how did you manage to only apply it to the background?

[pnodrog]

Hi Anton - I copied the background (original) on to a new layer made a selection of the blackbird and other items I wanted to remain clear, inverted the selection and applied it as a layer mask. Having done that I disabled the layer mask and cloned over the edges of the black bird and used a strong lens blur. (I find with lens blur if you have a strong colour it creeps(bleeds) into the blur and if it is not part of the background spoils the blur. The lens blur was not sufficient to soften the highlights and branches so I did some cloning with a soft broad brush set to about 30% transparency to make the background look how I wanted it.
Re enabled layer mask and then played around with levels and hue saturation on both layers, flattened, sharpened and did final crop.

It only sounds complicated and time consuming when I try to explain it and it did take about 30 minutes. Time flies when you are having fun.

Give it a go one evening when the TV is useless.

[groovesection]

Thank you Paul for such a detailed description, I will not pretend i understand everything (I have only been using PS for a few weeks) but i have experience of other picture editors and i understand what a layer is.
Thanks again my friend for taking time to not only produce the image, but explain your workflow