Green Heron #2

[Ed Vatza]

Another Green Heron image from last evening. Same mill race. Same bank. Slightly better angle since the Heron was a little farther away reducing the angle a bit. Head turn could be better.

Canon 30D; Canon 300mm f/2.8L IS with Canon 2x TC; Natural light

<!-- / message --><!-- sig --> 1/200 sec @ f/10; ISO 200; 0 EV; Focal length 600mm (35mm equivalent is 960mm)

[Leroy Laverman]

The background is a bit busy but that's the habitat they live in. Maybe opening the aperture would help with the background? The weeds on the water look oversharpened to me. If you sharpen with layers you can mask this out. I love the feathers on the top of the head. It really gives the bird character.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The angle really is much better. The BG is a bit busy and I agree regarding head turn. It is a bit tight in the frame for my taste.

[John Cooper]

Hi Ed - lovely sharp image of this heron. Maybe a little extra space at the top would give it a less cramped appearence.

[Ed Vatza]

Thanks Leroy. Thanks Axel. Thanks John. As always, I really appreciate the feedback/critiques.

Re: Oversharpening. The water in this stretch of the millrace is very still and the bloom that you see looks like what was captured here. So I don't think it is oversharpened but, since I did do some sharpening, I could be wrong.

Re: Tightness in frame. I had more trouble than I ever had getting the file size down to 200kb. When I exported the file from Lightroom as a JPEG, I had to keep reducing quality until I got down to 50% and I was still above 200kb. So somewhat exasperated, I cropped the image down from 800 pixels to what you see here. So there is more room around the Heron in the original image.