Great Blue Heron

[Dave Leroy]

Another photo with a bit of habitat. This one is ff so no cropping and I removed a few blades of grass.
50D, 500mm + 1.4TC, 1/1600, f/8, EC +2/3, ISO 400.

I'm curious about the sharpness on this one.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Dave Sharp it is !!

Fort these type images would suggest not stopping down at all, want to blur bg as much as possible !! As presented would darken all corners to draw attention to the center and try running Gausean blur over the bg.

I like environmental images but they are more difficult than one with plain bg, on this one I'm drawn to the bg and competes with the image !! ... did do well in isolating the head, making it sharp and well exposed !!

[Lance Peters]

Hi Dave - agree with AL re the aperture - you can sometimes get OOF foreground elements to work as part of the composition - IE: BG and FG both blurred and using that to frame the image. Doesnt always work but when it does - sweet!!
Sharp as a tack - like the eye contact and HA.
Keep em coming ;)

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks Guys. I may fool with this one a bit and see what I would need to do in the future.

I guess the KISS rule always applies with KISS meaning no fg and a nice blurred bg. Simple is a lot tougher than it sounds.:cool:

[Dave Mills]

Hi Dave, Agree with both comments above. These type of images can be tricky to balance. Very often one isn't thinking of this in the field but if you have the time with the subject(and their cooperating) it would be a good idea to try different techniques.

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Dave For inclusion of bg is always tough but desirable, I'm always looking for ways of doing !!

In camera you can try to keep mayor branches from intersecting the head or other objectionable body parts. With close objects in the bg even stopping down makes it tough .. btw if you do try blurring the bg try doing it in a way as if it was taken with a 2.8 lens. I downloaded the image and played with the bg blurring but did not look natural ... went overboard :)