Great Egret... breeding colors

[Joseph Przybyla]

Here you go, Artie. I was photographing this beautiful Great Egret that was all gussied up for the ladies when the head turned towards me causing the tip of the bill to go out of focus. Rather than deleting the image I decided to crop tight to show the profound changes during a short breeding season. The bill blackens on top, the lore turns a brilliant bluish green, the eye turns raging red, all together a very striking appearance. I intentionally left the second catch light. Image captured at Gatorland in Orlando, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED image captured at 400mm
1/4000 F/8 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 640 Auto 1 WB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom Classic CC, Photoshop CC 2019 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped for composition and presentation

P.S. Looking at the image as posted here the colors are more saturated than in the 16 bit TIFF. I must be in the conversion to a 8 bit JPEG and sRBG. Interesting, when I changed the settings in Chrome to use the hardware accelerator the image on my display appears as in the 16 bit TIFF.

[John Mack]

Well it sure does show off those lores and that red eye. I like the green background. The top of the birds head has a halo around it.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I can see the tight crop here. Bird head has weird halos.. I think this needs rework.

TFS

[Jonathan Ashton]

A good lose up but it looks as though you have given the pixels a bit of a bashing Jo! The NR and the sharpening are fighting each other in the plumage, also look at the rim around the bird, I think you have a good image but need to go a little easier on the processing.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing and commenting, very much appreciated. I will have another go at processing, thanks again.

[Dorian Anderson]

Beautiful look at the lores and eye, but I'd prefer to see them in the context of the whole beak/head. Detail is great though. Agree the processing is wonky, so I'd pull back a bit.