Intermediate Egret in breeding plumage

[Aditya Sridhar]

Hi all! Hope everybody's safe and healthy!

This image was shot in earlier this year (mid-Feb) at a local marsh. It was a straight-forward edit with minimal cloning (just a small black bar behind the bird) and a slight change to the WB. The downsizing and compression has affected sharpness as viewed on this forum, but the RAW image is sharp. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Camera - Nikon D850
Focal Length - 700mm
Aperture - f/8
Shutter Speed - 1/800s
ISO - 1400
Handheld
Manual, Auto ISO
~50% of Full-frame

[David Roach]

The thumbnail teased... The canvas delivered... Just sublime... TFS

[gail bisson]

This is fantastic Aditya!
The low POV, the mostly back lighting ( maybe a bit of sidelight) is wonderful and you exposed for it perfectly.
The color palette is great and the water in the mouth and water droplets look like tumbling stars.
Reflection is excellent.
This is one of the best BPN pictures I have seen this year.
10/10 from me!
:5

[Colin Driscoll]

On golden pond! Lovely shot indeed.

[dankearl]

It is a nice photo, the top half is really nice, the reflection not as good, not sharp.
A really nice effort and I would have posted this but it needs some tweaks for me.
I would add some contrast and darken the foliage. lower the highlights a tad.
Excellent post though. A lot to critique.

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Hi Aditya, the mood is dreamy here with lovely colours. I like the concept, but wish that the bird wasn't partially concealed. Reflection is nice.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Aditya, I love the tranquil feel and misty morning, the symmetry works very well (albeit a fraction off the top to equalise?) and the icing for me is the water drops and cobweb stand.

My first impression was that it was looking all a bit thin and then reading further I agree with Dan, it needs a bit more oomph to bring back some tonal range and depth, the plumage lacks the tad detail, but it's there. If the raw is sharp and you have sharpened for output at this size the file not suffer any real degradation.

How far one goes Aditya is a personal taste, just thought I would add this into the mix.

Nice work.:cheers:

TFS
Steve

[Jan van Holten]

Very beautiful, this golden moment. Maybe it is just a fraction to soft, but only a tiny bit.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Aditya ... a so beautiful and tranquil scene you have captured , so full of mood . Just gorgeous !!!
I would go with your OP ... any more tonal depth and or sharpening , more color would kill it for me . Just my view on my screen :w3

Love it !!!

TFS Andreas

[Bill Dix]

This is quite lovely. I thought about an alternate crop, but couldn't come up with anything I liked better. I like Steve's RP, but it lacks the dreamy quality that the OP has. Either way, great shot.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely image, i would suggest some contrast would help presentation.

[William Dickson]

Looking good Aditya....This is the kind of image you can look at for a long time, and still come back for more....Imagine a large print

Well done

Will

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Aditya, love the image. I think there are some good suggestions offered. I am not sure if you captured this in portrait or landscape, if landscape I might crop differently but without seeing the original hard to know. Thank you for sharing.

[John Mack]

Love the mood to this one. Like the reflection and the water drops out of the bill. The back lighting looks great.

[Arthur Morris]

What Gail said. I too prefer the original post. The droplet reflections are mega!

with love, artie

ps: you might try a version with some YELLOW taken out of the WHITEs ...

[Aditya Sridhar]

Thanks everyone for the lovely comments and the excellent feedback!

Dan - Thanks for the great critique. I'll give that a shot.

Steve - Thanks for taking the time to edit the image. It certainly has given me a thing or two to think about.

Joe - It was originally a landscape composition, but I felt like the only way to make the image work was to crop it vertically. I think I'll spend a bit more time trying to compose it as a landscape. Thank you!

Arthur - Great suggestion. I was worried that the bird might be a bit too yellow, but I wasn't sure. I'll try to fix that!

[Alex Becker]

Late to the party, but ditto all the positives. This is one of the nicest images I've seen it a while. It has an amazing quality to it and the water drops add so much. TFS, a very special frame.