Outback Scene #2

[Enug]

Another Outback scene.

[D Akey]

Overall, June, it's gorgeous.

There is a major problem though and I can see you tried to deal with it: The bird's head is getting lost against the trees. It's that age old thing about an ostrich burying its head in the sand thinking nobody can see them because they can't see anyone. This one's headless body is still quite visible.

The effect you created looks more like it mirrored the tree texture just to the right of the head, so it blends in like a protective coloration effect more than a picture. The solution would have come in your initial composition -- the placement of the bird and the mapping of the terrain's dark and light as a backdrop. Without it you're fighting the invisibility especially considering the high contrast of the very dark body against the wheat color. Remember you're staging something, and in this case you just didn't put the spotlight on the star. It's one of the pitfalls of copying photos and not improving them where needed. I'm assuming you were copying because I doubt you would have staged it like this because you would have seen the conflict up front.

But the colors and the lighting and textures are great. Nice rendering. That one mistake is the only problem -- something you can definitely avoid once aware of those concerns.

[Enug]

You are so right dear DA - I did try to add a break in the foliage and on my computer it seemed to work. Looking again at it here it was definitely the wrong way to approach it. I've resized the emus a little and moved them down. Also I felt the values of the distant hills and foreground were too similar to I lightened the foreground.

[gxhpainter2]

beautiful work June and you made the correct correction to the initial problem... that is the wonderful thing about working digitally..

[Enug]

Thanks Gary I agree and have found the undo button has become a very good friend.

Raselbst - thank you, so kind of you to comment.

[Caesar]

Fantastic, especially the second version we can observe far better ...