Light and feathers

[Juan Aragonés]

No head, no eye contact, no low angle... but I love this image and the reason is just the fantastic light and the textures that it created on the feathers of this squacco heron. I am sure that some of you would prefer the same image with a neat head between the wings, me too, but I couldn´t get the head. I have several images of the same series with the wings folded and with the head very visible but they are simply, boring, lacking interest. I decided to save this image and do not deleted it. At home, I opened the file in CS4 and, wow loved the light at the first second.

Almost full frame, Nikon D300 AFS Nikkor 500VR handheld from the car, manual exposure, 1/ f7,1/1250s ISO640

Processing job: one RAW conversion, levels adjustment, a touch of saturation boost, selective remove of the blue cast in the wings (uuuumm, not sure, but I think that I like most with the blue cast in the wings), and sharpening to the bird. No noise reduction. Small crop at the left and top of the frame

More images of squacco herons in my blog

[Randy Stout]

Juan:

Photography is the capturing of light, in all its varied guises. You have done just that here. The spot light like effect and backlighting is great. It reminds of what I try with my macro images.

From a comp. standpoint, I might crop up a bit from the bottom.

Thanks for sharing. This really works for me.

Randy

[David Roach]

The composition, the motion, the light through those feathers... Works for me! Congrats!!!

[Grace Scalzo]

Beautiful, moody image, Juan. I could see you coming a bit tighter on the bottom and on the right as an alternative.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

This works for me, too. I like the light, mood and sun shining through the feathers. I only find that brick-like rock at the bottom a bit distracting.

[Juan Aragonés]

Thanks for the suggestions to everyone. My intention was to crop a bit at the top and at the left (in the original file) to place the bird more at the upper left corner but I have to agree with your suggestions. More croping from the bottom and to remove the distracting stone. It makes sense to me :-)

[Randy Stout]

Juan:

I think the repost is stronger. The rocks did bother me a bit, hence the rec: on cropping up.

The feeling in this one is strong.

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

The backlighting through the wings works so well in this Juan. It enhances the different layers of feathers. I also like the small puff of dust at the feet. Your recrop works well too. Well spotted and captured.

[Markus Jais]

That one works very well, even without eye contact. Sometimes breaking the rules lead to a great shot - as in your image.
Great light and composition.

Markus

[Hugh J McLaughlin]

The light pulls you right into the image so strongly. From this perspective, one wonders exactly what the heron is doing.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I understand why you like it. But in this case, my PP suggestion would be something more like this. Hope you don't mind :) Congratulaitons.

[Raymond Barlow]

cool shot Juan, I like your first crop, and would have cloned out the stone.

[Krijn Trimbos]

Hi Juan,
I really like the idea and love the splashes of light going through the feathers. The surroundings however are a bit distracting too me and as such I would go for Ramon's repost at least a version like it, maybe I would play around with the idea of increasing contrast at the black point a bit more. In this way all the nice features of the shot are increased and all the distraction removed. Cool species BTW.

Cheers,

Krijn

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful, loved the setting Brother.. the repost works well, also Ramons post looks artistic but would prefer it with just about showing a little detail of the surrounding... congrats..

[Juan Aragonés]

Hi all and thanks a lot for your comments and suggestions. Ramón, you went very far in the processing job to my taste (it looks a bit unnatural) but I like the idea you are suggesting and I will see how it works in this image :)-) Perhaps something between both images is a the better choice ;)