Dealing with a clear blue sky

[wes]

Hey everyone, I was just playing around with some recent images and had a question. I have never been a fan of bird shots where you are underneath the subject and the only thing behind it is clear blue sky. Case in point

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Does anyone have any tips or tricks to make the sharp contract between bird and sky a little less.... harsh?

 

[DRwyoming]

Does anyone have any tips or tricks to make the sharp contract between bird and sky a little less.... harsh?

Not really.

The mid day light was somewhat harsh so a bit of shadow pulling near the breast and perhaps the tail feathers might help a bit but in terms of the blue sky that's pretty much the hand you were dealt with that shot. Some folks might replace a sky like that but personally I'm not a big fan of background replacements in nature images. Sometimes the situation just isn't ideal which is always frustrating but it's part of the game and makes it even more satisfying when your subject, shooting angle, background and light all work well together.

 

[wes]

Not really.

The mid day light was somewhat harsh so a bit of shadow pulling near the breast and perhaps the tail feathers might help a bit but in terms of the blue sky that's pretty much the hand you were dealt with that shot. Some folks might replace a sky like that but personally I'm not a big fan of background replacements in nature images. Sometimes the situation just isn't ideal which is always frustrating but it's part of the game and makes it even more satisfying when your subject, shooting angle, background and light all work well together.

This was taken at 8AM! With all the fires and general haze, Denver and the surrounding area has been a real bummer to shoot in.

 

[DRwyoming]

This was taken at 8AM! With all the fires and general haze, Denver and the surrounding area has been a real bummer to shoot in.

Yeah, the smoke has been tough. Was out in the national park yesterday and couldn't even see the Tetons through the smoke which was really eerie.

 

[bleirer]

Maybe a bit of a gradient, to add interest. You already have a bit of a vignette going on, so you could accentuate that more. More extreme would be a HSL adjustment layer, maybe tone down the saturation, or even a lookup table adjustment layer, swap out another blue, robins egg maybe.

 

[NorthernFocus]

Maybe try a B/W conversion.

 

[EricBowles]

It's not always the best solution, but with an unattractive background my normal technique is to shoot tighter or crop. That may limit what you can do with the shot, but if the sky is not adding value, reduce or eliminate it. In the field, use a longer lens to limit the field of view.

One other option is you can change the color of the sky. The blue channel is the problem, but if you use the remaining color information only - or the opposite side of the color wheel - you'll probably end up with a multi-toned orange that looks like a dark sunlit cloud at sunset.

 

[bleirer]

It's not always the best solution, but with an unattractive background my normal technique is to shoot tighter or crop. That may limit what you can do with the shot, but if the sky is not adding value, reduce or eliminate it. In the field, use a longer lens to limit the field of view.

One other option is you can change the color of the sky. The blue channel is the problem, but if you use the remaining color information only - or the opposite side of the color wheel - you'll probably end up with a multi-toned orange that looks like a dark sunlit cloud at sunset.

The color lookup adjustment layer does something similar. You just scroll through the choices and see if any are appealing. You can easily mask the bird if needed.

 

[Woodyg3]

I agree that the clear blue sky is not the best background, but I have often had non-photographers see a picture of mine with nothing but blue sky behind a bird and they ooh and ahh about the beautiful sky. It's all subjective.

Meanwhile, I'll echo the comment that adding a gradient to the sky really can make for a better background in my experience.

 

[JDG Photo]

I photographed several pleasing skies and loaded them them into Photoshop Sky Replacement. I removed the stock photos that came with it. This gives me a composite photo that is all my images.