Flock of Widgeon

These are part of a flock of about hundred widgeon which are currently wintering on Seafield Pond. I see them most days when I take the dogs for their afternoon walk. Often as today, they are feeding on the banks of the pond when I first approach but retreat fairly quickly when they see the dogs so I always need a long lens on to capture them.

One of the pitfalls of this type of flock photography is that you always one or two birds half in frame a on the edges of the picture unless you happen to hit a lucky crop. However this is no longer a problem in Photoshop as you do not even need to do the cloning yourself, just roughly select an area around the birds you want to remove ( I usually use the polygonal lasso tool ) and go to Edit> Fill> Context Aware and Photoshop will do all the hard work for you cloning over the birds with surrounding content in a seamless way. If you haven’t tried it just have a go with any unsightly thing you want to remove from an image. It’s magic.