Today features just one photo, and once again I slowed the camera to create motion blur. The original exposure was quite dark as you can see, but I liked the shot as the trees in the background add colour and contrast to the heron. 
Left as it is the shot really doesn't work, but I liked the composition and movement so I wanted to see what I could rescue. I lifted the exposure a full couple of stops, and played around with highlights and midtones to draw out the colour. While those were fairly radical in extent, they are basic edits for dealing with underexposed shots. I then cropped the image and added a vignette filter (which creates the white surround). Those steps were all carried out in Lightroom. The final tweak was done in Photoshop where I used the sharpening menu and combined very heavy sharpening and motion blur filter to accentuate the impact of the sharpened pixels (the aim of the filter is to reduce blur, but I tweaked in the opposite direction). The end result gives a heavily textured effect which is (I think) a reasonable representation of a painted image (click the large version to see what I mean).
Large size
The whole process took less than 5 minutes from scratch.
Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.
derWandersmann
30 Nov 2011HOT damn! You done good, old son!
It works very well, indeed.
serola
30 Nov 2011Excellent editing
gdare
30 Nov 2011Did you use one of the Nik software effects on the second one, too? Looks like Vintage Fog, or whatever its name is, can't really remember now :left:
Words
30 Nov 2011Sami, thanks!
Words
30 Nov 2011Darko, I wasn't even sure what Nik was until I did a search. The editing was all done manually.
Words
30 Nov 2011dW, thanks!
Words
30 Nov 2011Thanks Lois!
cakkleberrylane
30 Nov 2011Very well done!
SittingFox
2 Dec 2011Very cool indeed :yes: Could easily imagine that on a wall somewhere 🙂
Words
2 Dec 2011Adele, thanks! I'm getting a bit (but only a bit) more adventurous with photo-editing. Mainly because I'm getting so many underexposed/overexposed shots at the moment.
Mickeyjoe-Irl
6 Dec 2011There's a heron that's taken up residence on a small river just up the road. Both my mother and I have spotted it, but only while in the car so no photos… yet.
Words
6 Dec 2011Mick, they tend to be creatures of habit, so keep watching for it.
derWandersmann
7 Dec 2011Originally posted by Mickeyjoe-Irl:
Put the camera in the car.
derWandersmann
7 Dec 2011Originally posted by Mickeyjoe-Irl:
Brakes.
Mickeyjoe-Irl
7 Dec 2011It's more a problem of taking photos while driving.
Mickeyjoe-Irl
7 Dec 2011By the time I stopped he'd be long gone.
Them's the breaks. 😉