It was nice light this afternoon and I decided to spend some time by the water and hope for some nice Osprey shots. While I watched Zorro and Esperanza in their favorite tree way across the river I decided to find something closer to photograph.

As I awaited a Great Blue Heron flew in onto a piling. Alas it was in the shade, but the water was looking beautiful with the late afternoon sun. So much so, it was just too much yellow in the water and I found it distracting.

I decided to try something different and added a Sleeklens black and white preset which is available for free with their starter pack.

As charming as this image was becoming, it still wasn’t there for me. I was attracted to the grass that was in front of the piling, framing the scene. There was also a lot of noise due to the high ISO I was using due to the low light. I passed it through the Nik Collection Dfine noise reduction program, allowing the automatic adjustment to do the work. Google’s Nik Collection is also a free download and offers several program packages that are fun to use.

The final touch was to bring the image into Topaz Impressions to add a painterly effect. I selected one of the Swirly Strokes filter and reduced the opacity.

What do you think of the final result?