Great Egret - Electrified

[ericbowles]

This image may bring to mind Artie's cover shot from The Art of Bird Photography. It was taken at the Venice Rookery in January.

I'd like some strong suggestions for editing this one more effectively. It's good as is - but would benefit from a stronger edit.

Nikon D300
Nikon 300 f/4 AFS
f/5.6
1/320 sec
ISO 640
From a tripod in light rain

Thanks,

Eric

[Dan Brown]

Well captured behavior Eric! As for improvements, I would like to see a bit more room on the left and right and the BG seems noisey. Doing a NR on the BG only would be good.

[Filomena Larson]

Very nice capture! I agree a little more room on both sides would be nice. Well done. Congrats!

[Brian Barcelos]

Eric, Very nice interaction. I agree with more space on the sides and BG noise, I also see some ?cloning artifacts? around the birds and foliage, Not really sure what it is.

Brian

[Juan Aragonés]

Love the pose of both birds, just fantastic. I agree about more room at the left and right but just a bit. The image is a bit cold to my taste and I think that some warming of the colour would be great. I agree that you have some unpleasant jpeg artifact around the beak of both birds (most probably due to selective sharpening and jpeg compression, not from cloning job).
The image is a bit flat to my taste, try to adjust the midtones just a biit
Very nice image ;-)

[Kiran Poonacha]

Great image Sir.. the eye contact of birds is great and the ruffed looks makes this, congrats..

[Stu Bowie]

Super interaction captured in this, and both in perfect focus. Sharp, and I Like Juan's repost.

[Ryan Lambert]

I too would like to see a bit more space either side, you'll most probably find that the crop on the right has cut-off the tail feathers behind the leaves. Juans repost seems to have cleaned up the image a bit, is this a largish crop? Excellent interaction captured here and good to get both birds in focus, congrats. Also I feel a bit of levels tweaking could bring the image alive.

[ericbowles]

Thanks everyone for the the nice comments and suggestions.

I like Juan's edit, and there are several ways I can darken the background as well as some of the reflections on the foliage. I'll see how much extra room I have on the crop - this crop was based on trying to keep the subject large in the image but may have been a little too aggressive.

The artifacts are related to sharpening a small image for posting here - no issues on the full size image.

I'll play around with warming it up a bit - particularly the foliage.

I really appreciate the constructive suggestions. I'll update with a new version in a few days.

Thanks,

Eric