American Bittern Hunting

[Michael Lotito]

Canon 1D Mark 4 With EF 500mm f4
1/1600 sec, F6.3, ISO 800

Just cropped for composition and sharpened.

Thanks for looking.
"Now that I have ruled out defective equipment it only leaves me that needs fixing." Thanks in advance for all critique and advice!

Michael Lotito
Aquebogue, NY

[Michael Lotito]

Oh yes please remember that I am extremely "Photoshop Challenged"!

[James Shadle]

Michael,
Your Bittern is exposed well and you captured an excellent moment in time.
American Bitterns are hard enough to find, much more difficult to find and photograph one foraging.

This is what I call a habitat or behavioral image. The background really tells a story.
Take your eye off of a American Bittern and you may have a hard time finding it again (even with it right in front of you:)).

This could be stronger with more room at the bottom. As is, if the Bittern where out of the water, part of the legs would be out of the frame.

I'm not a PS expert by any means, but it looks like you sharpened the Bittern while masking or brushing the background.

In any case, on my monitor the Bittern looks over sharped. Was the Bittern a little soft to begin with?

James

[Daniel Cadieux]

How lucky for you to have witnessed this species in full hunting mode!! Were you wading into the water? Very busy habitat, typical of where they like to live. Not much I can add to James' critique, but to me it looks like the image may have jpg compression issues due to resizing, especially if your image is perfectly sharp to begin with.

[denise ippolito]

Michael, It was great shooting with you again and I think you should get an A+ for effort! You really did get a nice environment shot here and great advice from James.:)

[Chad Caswell]

Good advice from James, and yes a great capture!