eyes

[Randy Rimland]

Great White Egret at The Aligator Farm rookery in St Augustine Florida last week.


D7100 + 80-400afs, f/5.6, 1/640, iso800, 400mm, crop and sharpen only in post

127281

[Doug West]

The image looks a little under exposed to me. You should be able to
fix that in post.

The head also looks a little soft. A little more sharpening might also help.

For this type of head angle, stopping down another stop or two, like maybe
F5.8 would help with the eyes and beak.

Doug

[Marina Scarr]

Love this pose. It appears as though your point of focus was on the bird's neck instead of its face which is why the head is a bit soft. The most important part of any subject to have in focus is the eye. So next time, you may wish to try focusing on the eye and recomposing. I do think a bit more sharpening of the head would help as well as whitening the whites.

[Randy Rimland]

thanks for the feedback guys

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I like the idea you were going for but as previously stated I think you missed the focal point. I also find the bg a bit distracting. Maybe more sharpening on the head and toning down the white spots in the bg would help.

[Randy Rimland]

thanks Cheryl
AF point was right on his chin, in hindsight I should have stopped the lens down to f/8 or so, I wanted the chin and eyes in focus. For years I have shot dogs or anything with big noses on the nose to get the nose and eyes in focus. I hate an OOF nose (or chin) in front of sharp eyes, just looks weird to me and I know most would rather have an OOF nose and in focus eyes if they had to choose.

Any here's a repost, selectively sharpened the chin up, bumped the exposure, toned down the highlites and removed the white spots (other Great Whites in nests)
[edit] i missed a spot on the tip of his peak


127323

[Troy Lim]

Exposure on repost looks good but still has some noise.
Agree on the focus point. I feel the image works best in portrait mode and crop off 1/3 of the bird's body on the left. It would be more effective and focus on what you were trying to achieve here.