Perched & Curious Green Heron

[Daniel Grossi]

170446
Seems like forever since I last posted in here. What started off as a slow and uneventful morning of photography quickly turned into a wonderful experience when this little guy flew in out of nowhere. I so desperately wanted a BIF shot, but I'll certainly settle for a clean perch like this.

Nikon D500 (Handheld)
Nikkor 600mm f/4E FL ED VR
1/1000
f/5.6
ISO-400
Matrix Metering
15-20% cropped from top/left/bottom

Cleveland. Ohio USA
July 2017
Muggy and mostly sunny 2 hours after sunrise.

[Steve Kaluski]

Pretty neat Daniel, classic pose and the 'strata' backdrop works for me. The perch is what it is and sometimes you have to compromise. Looks like the PP is improving too, likewise the techs.

TFS
Steve :wave:

[Daniel Grossi]

Pretty neat Daniel, classic pose and the 'strata' backdrop works for me. The perch is what it is and sometimes you have to compromise. Looks like the PP is improving too, likewise the techs.

TFS
Steve :wave:

Thanks Steve! I agree with what you said about the perch, I'm not huge on that branch coming out - but oh well, what can you do.

[Steve Kaluski]

I'm not huge on that branch coming out - but oh well, what can you do.

You can remove it if you have PS, if you wanted?

[William Dickson]

Lovely colours throughout the image. I love the pose and detail on the bird. Another yes for removing the branch.

Will

[Daniel Grossi]

Lovely colours throughout the image. I love the pose and detail on the bird. Another yes for removing the branch.

Will

Thanks William! I spent a lot of time getting the colors (more specifically white balance) correct. I'll work on getting that branch removed and I'll repost. It's not something I'm terribly familiar with doing so it will make for a good learning experience.

[Isaac Grant]

Nice Green Heron image with a pretty and uncluttered background. Details look very nice. The log has a reddish/magenta cast on my screen. As for cloning out the branch it is fairly easy in Photoshop. I did a quick version of your shot.

Selected the trunk and in hue/saturation I reduced the reds and magents -50 each.

I used the clone tool to get close to the perch but not all the way there. Cloned out a small area using the background that is very similar as the source (alt plus left click on a PC) so the perch is not connected to the trunk. Then used the lasso tool and did a content aware fill (Shift f5 on a PC) and PS should fill in the rest nicely for you. Do some follow up cloning if it did not do a seamless fill. As for where the stick touches the trunk that takes a bit more work. Again I chose a source just above and below and did a few passes until the 2 ends met. Typically I do this zoomed in quite a bit so I know that I am not messing anything up. Of course this is much easier on the original and not on your tiny version. Just wanted to give you an idea of what can be done. Once you get the techniques down removing that branch won't take more than a minute. Let me know if you have any questions.

[Daniel Grossi]

Nice Green Heron image with a pretty and uncluttered background. Details look very nice. The log has a reddish/magenta cast on my screen. As for cloning out the branch it is fairly easy in Photoshop. I did a quick version of your shot.

Selected the trunk and in hue/saturation I reduced the reds and magents -50 each.

I used the clone tool to get close to the perch but not all the way there. Cloned out a small area using the background that is very similar as the source (alt plus left click on a PC) so the perch is not connected to the trunk. Then used the lasso tool and did a content aware fill (Shift f5 on a PC) and PS should fill in the rest nicely for you. Do some follow up cloning if it did not do a seamless fill. As for where the stick touches the trunk that takes a bit more work. Again I chose a source just above and below and did a few passes until the 2 ends met. Typically I do this zoomed in quite a bit so I know that I am not messing anything up. Of course this is much easier on the original and not on your tiny version. Just wanted to give you an idea of what can be done. Once you get the techniques down removing that branch won't take more than a minute. Let me know if you have any questions.

Wow, I did not catch that color on the trunk, thanks Isaac! I'll give this a shot in PS.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Nice Image. I like the re-post. I don't mind the branch.

I like the green color at the top and nice clean out of focus background.

Thanks for sharing.

[annmpacheco]

Super nice image and repost is wonderful, thanks for sharing that information Isaac, very helpful and wow, what a difference!

[Daniel Grossi]

Nice Image. I like the re-post. I don't mind the branch.

I like the green color at the top and nice clean out of focus background.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Krishna! I was really excited when I saw him land - I knew I had a really nice background to work with.