More editing/behind the scenes content?
Yes, more behind the scenes.
I'm only here for the pretty bird pics.
Raw photo.
2. Darken background w/ masking (focusing on blacks and darks, leave highlights alone because it will get rid of the delightful little bokeh on the water surface. Also popped the saturation & warmed up white balance)
3. Run De-noise (not necessary per-se, but pulls some details back into some of the feathers and I'm a recovering pixel peeper.)
4. Final touches: open in photoshop and dodge/burn the particles in the water, and around the backlit feathers to pull a little more contrast/saturation. Also took a little saturation out of the lightest feathers of the ducklings bc they pulled too orange for me, and knocked the white balance a little more green - the whole image was feeling a little too pink for me.
Full-size before and afters.
This is pretty much the exact process I follow with backlit images. I try to keep most of my edits "true to life" - but there is a lot of subjectivity in that statement lol.














