Processing

There was a lot of talk at our Tyttenhanger twitch about an influx of Two-barred Crossbills and since then they've been regularly reported at Lynford Arboretum, so that's where we headed today and as you can see we weren't disappointed and on the way home we popped in to Weeting Heath to check out the Stone Curlews.

Now I did say we weren't disappointed - we'd got our life ticks of Two-barred Crossbills, but the two birds a female & juvenile were always high in the larches and favoured the shady side of the trees which meant all shots were into the light and distant. I'd tried all sorts of combinations of over exposure to get the bird detail, but once I got the photos home I was definitely disappointed with the results. I decided to set my mate Alan a challenge and sent him the best two shots and challenged him to do better - he did, significantly better.

I must admit to being a bit lazy in processing. I got a version of Elements many moons ago and have stuck to its simple tools even though I've also got a far more sophisticated option with CS5. When I saw Alan's results and was able to duplicate and even slightly improve with CS5. Elements isn't going to get much use in future.

Today's photo is one of the processed images while RCB has posted the other.