Chickadee and Snow

Another perch shot, but this one is strongly backlit, and I had some fun with it in the processing. The blue in this is heavily exaggerated. A dull blue grey would have been accurate. The background is a white fence in the shade a couple of lots away, so it was very cool in comparison, but I wanted to know how it would look if I gave it some extra saturation and tried darkening it so that the chickadee and perch stood out. At a first mild attempt I thought it almost looked like it was taken by moonlight, so I went heavier in adjusting the blue, along with a few other adjustments to come to what you see here.

 

I know it does not look real at all considering it was taken during the day, but this one was processed for feel as opposed to reality. I know it is early, but I thought it had a Christmasy feeling to it. This is close to the full frame so I could easily have cropped much closer to the chickadee, but I liked the look of the perch with the snow flakes on it maybe a bit more than the chickadee even. I liked how the perch was lit from beneath from light that was bouncing off of the snow on the ground.

 

Although the sun was shining brightly there were still some flakes coming down and did not last long so I only had a few shots to choose from.

Done