Recently while doing a family photoshoot the 2yr old was getting little bored and cranky, as 2yr olds are inclined to do when a strange lady is pointing a camera at him and trying to coax him to smile.
Solution...Send my 3yr old to go get a scoop full of chicken feed and put the family to work at the afternoon chores.
Since this was not planned as part of the photoshoot the area next to the chicken pen was ummmm lets just say "in it's working farm" condition.....But I snapped some photos anyway....
Now one of the problems with working with chickens is they do not tend to stay still and hence often you get what I refer to as "blurred chicken head" in the shot...So first thing I did was removed the 2 white chickens and half of black/white chicken from the shot...I then copied the ground from below the red chickens (because it was at the same scale as what I needed and I hate the look of just cloned areas side by side) and placed it in the gap left by the white chickens....merged the layers and then used the cloning stamp to blend the edges of the orginal ground and the newly placed ground together....ta-da....you can't even tell where the chickens had been....I then also using the cloning stamp removed the wood chipper and other assorted odds and ends out of the barn.
Lastly I cropped it give me my final composition, did a few little touches here and there...Blurred the ladies and the barn to add a little more emphasis on Dad and the little ones...Gave it a lovely warm glow.
I LOVE the end result
Blessings Kelsie