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One Fabulous Toucan
14 September 2017
It always pays to look up. We were at lunch the other day and just happened to stretch our neck a bit in preparation for a pitcher of margaritas. When we opened our eyes, there above us a fabulous toucan swung on its little perch.
We dug into our camera bag and aimed the Nikon D300 at it, tweaking the Lensbaby Twist 60 this way and that until we were pretty sure we had it in focus.
As charming (dimly-lit) restaurant, it wasn't a photo-friendly venue. Wide open at f2.5, we only managed a 1/15 second shutter speed at ISO 400. But somehow, we got a sharp shot.
But not a straight one. After all, we were bent backward looking up at an angle to get the toucan in our field of view.
So we worked on the image a bit in Photoshop.
We angled the toucan back to what we felt was straight (you can argue the point), leaving some white corners in the frame.
We filled them with Content-Aware fills that did a nice job but we still had to use the Healing brush to clean up some spots that didn't look real.
And we even went back to the other Rubber Stamp tool to extend the top point of the star.
If we didn't tell you, you wouldn't know.
Because, after all, it was all just background stuff, nothing claiming your attention. Nothing meaningful. Theater arts not photojournalism.
The real story is the color. And the bright toucan shines with it. So much so, we can't help but smile a little looking at it.
It's one fabulous toucan.
Comments
A couple of tucanos in my kitchen!
-- Lasse Jansson
Ah, lucky man! Two fabulous toucans! -- Mike