Yoga for Egrets

[susanschermer]

Alligator farm image. Highlights in BG toned down and blurred. Couldn't get the ones behind the tail feathers. Hope they don't distract too much. Late afternoon. Pretty close to the bird.
ISO 800 f/4 1/1000 Mark III 70-200 with 1.4 flash at -2/2/3 comp.

[Joe Senzatimore]

Great behavior capture. Love the pose. Exposure looks good as well.

[Randy Stout]

Susan:

Nice breeding plumage. I do find the green tinting and blurring of the elevated feathers on the left somewhat distracting. Unless the highlights were very pronounced, I think it would look more natural as shot.

I am sure there are members of the group good enough in PS to darken the background highlights effectively here, but I find it difficult to work around the fine detail of the this type of plumage.

You might want to post the original image and let people have a go at it!

Thanks for sharing.

Randy

[Ramon M. Casares]

Great pose and soft light, good exposure although I wolud tone down a few small spots here and there, nice BG, perch and detail. Congratulations!

[Doug Brown]

I'd like to have a crack at the original Susan.

[David Thomasson]

What a great pose (and your title catches the mood, I think).

Had an experimental go at the feathers/background on the left. The procedure is sort of complicated and involves some very small brush work. No doubt acceptable results could be pulled out of the original. Nice work, Susan!

(animated gif)

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/9726/yogabird.gif

[susanschermer]

OK, Guys. Here's the untouched RAW file. Go for it.

[Arthur Morris]

Interesting discussion and some great work as usual by David Thomasson. One question for Susan: why in the world would you crop anything off of the top???