One of our morning sessions with the snowy owls occurred with a dramatic sky backdrop. God-rays are spectacular, but when using a telephoto lens for a nearby subject, the background is guaranteed to be out of focus due to the limitations of optics. If you want to show the drama with everything in focus -- as our eyes see it -- the only way to do it is with a composite in Photoshop. Lightroom can't do this; this is why learning Photoshop is so important in photography. So, I carefully selected the owl from another shot using the quick selection tool along with the lasso tool working at 300% to make sure the selection was precise and perfect. I then feathered the edge 2 pixels, copied it to the clipboard (Edit > copy), and then pasted it into the landscape (Edit > paste) and moved it into place with the move tool. I spent time tweaking the color of the bird to match the tones of the background using Image > adjustments > hue/saturation. My settings for the owl were 1/3200, f/11, and auto ISO which turned out to be 1000. This picture almost seems artificial because we expect to see shallow depth of field with bird photos, but of course our eyes never see out of focus backgrounds.
4 Comments
Feb 17, 2019, 3:26:43 PM
Jim - Thank you, Bob. This is one of my favorites.
Feb 17, 2019, 2:45:53 PM
Bob Vestal - Another spectacular image, Jim. Composite works so well for this image.
Feb 17, 2019, 12:24:27 PM
Jim - Thanks, Bob. You might consider taking one of my Photoshop workshops. I explain in detail how to do this.
Feb 17, 2019, 11:17:29 AM
Bob Turner - Great composite. I have tried a few, none approach your images. Of course you have the skill