Assignment 2 - Response to Tutor Feedback

Several points in a deliberate shape

I went back to Clissold Park today and took this shot using my pop-up flash (in rear curtain sync mode) to freeze the movement of the delicate petals. This enabled me to keep the ISO down to 200 as I was not relying on shutter speed to reduce motion blur. I had several attempts at this to compose the flowers in the frame as they swung wildly in the wind! If I'd had a battery pack, I could have shot in burst mode and I would have got a decent shot in less time. I chose to make the background darker this time around by using a bleach bypass filter in Nik Efex Color. It helps the flowers to stand out and there's no detail in the background anyway. I've also cropped this to a square because I think this suits the shape of the plant better than a rectangular frame.

I can see what Russell meant about capturing 'both movement and static together'.  I like this effect and will use it again.

Diagonals

This image has been cropped to remove a shadow in the top-left corner, some of the negative space at the bottom of the image and part of a door on the right. I also took this opportunity to bump up the contrast a little by moving the white point in levels.

Curves

I've added 2 additional layers to this image to make the pelicans stand out more. On the first layer I have applied a Topaz Adjust spicify filter to show more of the pink/orange colour in the feathers. Then I added a Nik Tonal Contrast filter. Both of these were masked so that they only affected the birds.
I have increased the global contrast using curves to darken the lake because it is not as essential part of the image. The also results in a more solid background which focuses the eye on the birds.

Distinct Shape

I went back to the original Photoshop document and started again from scratch (saving it as a new file). This image is made up of 7 active layers. On the first layer, I cloned out the offending pelican in the background. Then applied a Topaz Adjust shadow recovery filter, followed by tonal contrast and noise reduction in Nik Color Efex. Levels and curves adjustments layers were used to even out the contrast, and then a further curves layer to lighten the image overall.

Implied triangle 2

I cropped this image to make the birds appear larger in the frame and added Topaz Adjust spicify and Nik Tonal Contrast filters to bring out more colour and detail in the feathers.