Processed Cows

[major_clanger]

We went for a wander around Sutton Park today; now that we have a car we're doing more exploring around the outskirts of Birmingham, and we quickly discovered this wonderful great chunk of countryside within Birmingham's suburban sprawl.

I had my DSLR with me and tried to get some interesting shots of a small herd of cows we met. I've done my best with a few minutes' work in Photoshop to bring the picture a bit more to life and I'd be interested in comments on the processed version vs the original :



Left: original, taken with Canon 400D and Canon 17-55 f/2.8, 1/200s at f/7.1, ISO 100, shot through neutral density graduated filter. Shot in RAW and small exposure tweak added.

Right: slightly realigned and cropped, layer overlays used to boost contrast and saturation.

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Would've composed slightly better - more striking, and more of the oddness of cows - if you'd moved to your left, giving clear gaps between the individuals.

A lower camera position, so that one or more of the subjects break the horizon, is always worth a try; especially when you have a 'false horizon' like the grass/trees boundary in your shot.

I'm not sure what the best colour treatment would be: UV filters are the limit of my ability here. If yoir editor package has an artificial UV sky filter, play with it a bit.

A final note: images with a natural division into three always make an interesting composition. Yours has one in a horizontal banding of grass-trees-sky, which always looks little odd and unsettling: great fun when the subject's looking straight at you, dead centre of the shot. Or vertically-centred. Or a cow.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The composition wasn't what I really wanted, but:
- there were other cows rather thoughtlessly cluttering up the scene from other angles.
- I was trying to keep some nearby cars out of shot.
- we were meant to be having a walk and I didn't want to spend too long being Arty whilst attimes_bracing got bored.

Also, White Cow was being rather awkward; kept on hiding behind Brown's ears.