Snowy Egret

[Bill Dix]

From Jamaica Bay in 2014. I believe I posted another frame of his hunting sequence at the time, but just came across this one in the files.

D7000, 500f4 + 1.4 TC, ISO 640, 1/3200s @ f/7.1 manual.

[Arthur Morris]

Ah, a dirty NYC bird :) I know what you were going for but the bird is too far forward in the frame. EXP and SH very good but the face is ugly. In a perfect world the near wing would have been fully raised.

with love, artie

ps: my bad -- I was not viewing the full frame :(

[Debapratim Saha]

Like the dynamic pose on this concentrating egret,lovely image.

[Bill Dix]

Ah, a dirty NYC bird :) I know what you were going for but the bird is too far forward in the frame. EXP and SH very good but the face is ugly. In a perfect world the near wing would have been fully raised.

with love, artie

ps: my bad -- I was not viewing the full frame :(

I guess that's what he gets from sticking his face into your favorite pond. :w3 I agree about the near wing.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Far wing looks great near wing so-so. Raised foot and bent ankle add a lot here. Good whites!

[Isaac Grant]

Had a good laugh about your pond comment Bill! :bg3:

Great action here of classic Egret behavior. Call me funny but I like me a good New York Egret that is a little less polished than those flashy Florida egrets :Whoa!:. Near wing is very good, maybe not perfect but still very nice. Bill was the water this green in real life? You remember? The shot has a bit of a greenish yellow cast to it. And there is some blue in the shadows under the near wing. Some levels adjustments, detail extractor (just to bring out a tad more detail on the bird) and color adjustments I think would really make the egret stand out more and fix the color problems. I adjusted the colors of the water as it seemed too green to me but that is an easy fix one way or the other.

[Susan Smitha]

Great shot. The wing angle has increased the photo's beauty. The detail looks fine.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Isaac. Your repost adjustments make the whites look nice. I'm not sure about the green. This was 4 years ago, and I don't recall what I did in post other than clone out a few oof swan feathers. I doubt that I did any color adjustment. I do recall a sense of elation at having put myself at the right place and time on that lovely morning. The greens of the pond were indeed very green; I went back and looked at other RAW files from that morning and many of them - some of my favorites - were even more green than this.

[Isaac Grant]

Easy fix one way or the other. I usually don't trust sensors when it comes to greens and yellows. But I know my opinion differs from others. Doing a global adjustment to reduce the yellow/green tint reduces the green in the water color but again not sure what was accurate. Anyway, always nice to have a bit of a different perspective and then you chose whatever works best for you.

[David Salem]

Nice image Bill. I like the pose and the whites look really nice to me. Well done