Young Grey Herons (Ardea Cinerea)

[JerzyJaugsch]

Hi!

The birds in the nest have been photographed in zoological garden in Wroclaw, Poland. Technical data: camera Canon Digital Rebel XTi, lens Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, Evaluative Metering, Shutter Priority, Av 14, Tv 1/200s, 400 ASA. Originally RAW, after the processing in Camera Raw in PS2, moderately cropped.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?attid=0.1&disp=emb&view=att&th=12e4a37e5af8be0e

[Dawn Currie]

Not sure why, but I'm not seeing your photo. No problems seeing other posts. Looks like several others have looked, but left no comment, so they may be having the same problem. Can you try reloading the photo? Thanks!

[JerzyJaugsch]

Hi! The next try to dowload photo.

89054

[Dawn Currie]

Success! I can see your photo now. I see you have run into the challenge I have with nesting birds - sticks or branches in the wrong spots (Partially obstructing the 3rd bird). Have you thought about cropping this vertically to just the two on the left? That would eliminate the distracting branch and really focus on the birds.

[Peter Farrell]

Hi, Jerzy. I like Dawns suggestion of a vertical crop losing the bird on the right.
This is a nice capture of the young in the nest, I like the way they are framed by the green leaves and you have a good shooting angle. Nice HA (head angle) on the two birds looking left.
Peter

[JerzyJaugsch]

Thank you for your comments; I have considered such cropping, but have been afraid of square format (don't like it) and I prefer to show birds in more natural surroundings - I would regret upper branch! By the way - in my computer the photo had 195kB and looked good - after the transfer photo has 80kB and has visible jpg artefacts.

[Julie Kenward]

Jerry, you left the resolution at 240 (which is great if you're making a print.) Drop the resolution to 72 for the web before uploading and then sharpen the image after you do the resizing.

You also have some blown highlights on the white breast of the left bird. If you open the image in Camera RAW you can probably recover those and get some of the detail back.

I think a closer crop taking out the 3rd bird would work - it doesn't have to be vertical or square. I used what you have here but if you did any cropping you can probably rework the image and get a better frame than what I did. I'd especially like to see a little more on the top if you go in this direction...