Great Blue Heron

[Aditya Sridhar]

This image was shot under bright overcast conditions. To be honest, I find portraits like these quite boring but I liked the background and the detail on the bill. I was able to get extremely close to the bird and filled the frame. In Photoshop, I cropped the image 16:9 and added canvas to the RHS for composition.

Edit : Corrected the ID to Grey Heron.

Camera - Nikon D850
Focal Length - 500mm
Aperture - f/5.6
Shutter Speed - 1/400s
ISO - 400
Handheld
Manual, Auto ISO
Crop - Full-frame

As always, comments and CC are appreciated :bg3:

[Colin Driscoll]

A good clean detailed portrait, and yes a great background.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Lovely feather detail and pure background. Maybe boring but shadows can make a big difference from the flat light of a overcast day. Thank you for sharing, Adi.

[Arthur Morris]

I love clouds as the "flat light" allows for great detail (as here) without harsh shadows. ANd yes, the BKGR is loverly and the image is sharp. 500 PF?

Could you have gotten six inches higher?

with love, a

[William Dickson]

Very nice, lovely light, and you got some lovely detail. A very pleasing BG which shows the bird well.

Will

[John Mack]

You were close to this guy. Nice detail all around on the bird. The gradient in the background is great. Like the crop as well.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I love tight portraits, so this appeals to me :-) Good details. I'm think the saturation could use a small bump...

[Aditya Sridhar]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Artie - I realized that I could've gotten slightly higher after I reviewed the pictures on my laptop :( I'll have to keep that in mind next time