White-faced Heron

[Glenn Pure]

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I saw quite a few of these working the shallows near the shoreline. It is a widespread and fairly common species. The thin cloud and strong light helped me create this high key look and hope it is sufficient to qualify for the theme. The rear foot looks deformed but it is simply an illusion created by a film of water as the bird lifted its foot. I have cloned a few unsightly clumps of seagrass out. Taken on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne. I had to rotate the frame a bit but otherwise uncropped.

As always, thank you for looking and for any comments you are kind enough to share.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/2500 sec, f7.1, ISO 1000. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Modest NR to bird and stronger NR to background. Bird only sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian Blur) after final size reduction.

[Jim Wetherall]

Really liking this one Glenn. Great comp, gorgeous light, feather detail is awesome. Really like the other bird in the background, it's part of the story!

[annmpacheco]

Hi Glenn,
I like this image as it portrays the usual habitat and foraging that they do. The thin blue in the sky is really quite nice and i wouldn't consider this a non high key image. Details and sharpness on the bird is excellent. I like the shadowed heron in the BG. Glad you mentioned the leg as i drew my eye and I thought "surgery". Id be tempted to clone in some so it doesn't attract at first look. TFS.

[William Dickson]

Another 'natural' looking image Glenn. Lovely detail on the bird and I like that pose. The seagrass looks good in the FG. The image looks ok with the bird in the BG, would be even better, if it wasn't in front of the main subject. But, on a personal note, I would clone it out, I think that would make a good image better. I hope you don't mind, me doing this, to give you an idea of what I mean.

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Will

[Arthur Morris]

I like em both. Perfect head angle. Not so sure about the foot not being injured ...I'd love to see one of these at Fort DeSoto!

with love, artie

[Bill Dix]

Really nice one, Glenn. I never did get a good shot of these guys, even though they're relatively common. I'm not usually a fan of oof birds in the bg, but I like this one. The RP is ok too, but I prefer your OP.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you Jim, Ann, Will, Artie and Bill. I did wonder whether the bird in the background would split views but liked the look of it so kept it. Thanks for the alternative version all the same, Will. As for the foot, I agree it does draw attention and could be a candidate for cloning. I do clone sometimes and have done so on some seagrass here but I'm usually a lot less comfortable ethically about cloning on the main subject so have resisted doing so here.