Geese on Parade

I photographed these geese last week in the parking lot behind Deborah's office.  She said they regularly parade through the lot foraging for food. This is less that half of the flock.  I shot them with a longer lens for the compression, and short depth of field.  The top image is the finished one, the bottom pretty much the way I toned in Camera Raw.

I liked the composition and the goose stepping in this image. It caught my eye the way the two on the extreme left are so alike in their pose, and the two very front birds(one on each side) almost mirror each other. 

I shot low so I would be on their level, and to make a more uniform background against the concrete.  I didn't like the colors and patterns running across the image. They were distracting, so I looked for a way to get rid of them. I tried several things, but finally used the eye dropper to pick the lightest color in the background, then painted the background using the brush tool. I set the opacity to less than 50% to help blend in the change. Some areas got more than others.  Then I went back and used a high key filter to lighten a bit more. I like the final image.