Black-crowned Night Heron

[Scott Frye]

Black-crowned Night Heron at Gilbert Water Ranch (Gilbert, Arizona)

These heron are are not resident but come to the southern Arizona wetlands to breed. During mid-spring it is not unusual to see 10-12 of these herons with their beige youngsters.

1/640 at f11 and ISO400 EC-1/3
Bigma at 313mm
Canon 40D

[Juan Aragonés]

The light is a bit strong to my taste and I think that some additional room at the bottom would be great. I like the pose of the bird and the fab¡ntastic eye but the BG is bit distracting.

[Tony Whitehead]

I agree with Juan's comments re light and BG, pose and lovely eye, Scott. I think cropping from above would reduce some of the distraction and patching could clean up the BG a bit more. Looks like you done some work on the water with that fuzzy dark halo visible above the perch. Opening up wider than f11 may have blurred out the BG a little more at capture.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the look-back pose and setting. The harsh light and the dark halo have been mentioned. I would tone down the perch more and remove the 4 vertical branches at the top. The rest of the OOF foliage looks actually quite nice.

[Julie Kenward]

Scott, here's an alternative crop for you to see. I took the others' advice and cropped away most of the top of the frame, leaving enough room for the bird's head to still move about. I cloned out the few branches that were more in focus so they wouldn't be as distracting. I fixed the cloning down around the branch area as well. (When you clone, make sure your final step is to take the image to 90-100% and really get in there along the edges so they are clean and crisp.)

I also added a second layer that I used a multiply blend mode on - this brought down the brightness on the branch. I masked off most of the rest of the image leaving it darker on the back feathers of the bird. I then did a final adjustment in levels bringing up the midtones just a little around the face and water.

It's a good image...it just needs a few more tweaks to bring out all the beauty in it!

[Scott Frye]

Beautiful Judy -- I like it much better than the original - thanks for taking the time to make the improvements. Now I want to learn about your method of toning down the branches so I will look into the multiply blend mode. My usual approach is to burn in the bright areas via overlay and brush. Very good job of cloning out the branches as there is a lot of detail around those branches. And the red eye still pops out of it. Very nice changes.