Great Egret Headshot

[Paul Ricciardi]

Hey guys I just found this forum and am pretty excited to be a member here...I've been looking for something like this for a while now.

Anywyas, decided I would start things off the right way with an image. This is one of many egret shots I took this past week. I was on spring break from school and headed down to the beach for four days and came away with some shots I'm happy with. Tell me what you think.

Olympus E500, Pentax SMC Takumar 500mm f/4.5 via adapter, stopped down to 5.6, ISO 400, natural light

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Welcome, Paul! Very nice first post. I like the pose and BG. I might give it a bit more room at the right and the whites have a green/turquoise cast. Keep them coming!

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Hi Paul,welcome to BPN,
agree with Axel`s comments

[Bob Ettinger]

Hi Paul,

Welcome and I agree with the other comments.

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome. Agree on the bluish cast to the whites. Did you do anything to the BKGR? I like that the bird's neck enters the frame from the corner. It would also help if the bird's head were turned a bit more towards you. (See the Head Angle Police thread in Educational Resourcces.)

later and love, artie

[Paul Ricciardi]

Arthur, the only thing I did to the photo was give it some slight curves in PS and a tiny saturation boost. The blue cast has been driving me nuts and I've just not gotten around to fixing it. Here's it again, I corrected the cast some.

I also had another shot with his head turned towards me slightly but I did not like it.

Thanks for the comments guys, I'm just getting started in wildlife photography but I'm loving every minute of it. It's hard to find time for it though what with being a full time student and a part time worker.

[Arthur Morris]

In that case, I really like the background. The repost is better but your image optimization skills will improve over time.

later and love, artie

[Linda Robbins]

Welcome Paul!

You did a good job framing with the neck beginning in the corner of the frame and this great egret is in beautiful breeding plumage. The background is lovely. I think that you have oversaturated the image quite a bit, which is accounting for the blue cast - improved, but not eliminated in the repost. Your post is on the small side...you can post up to 800 on the long side. Glad you have joined us and hope you'll learn lots here. Looking forward to seeing more of your images!

[Paul Ricciardi]

Hi Linda, thanks for the advice. The original scene actually came out to be pretty saturated, I think I only gave this image +5 or +6 in PS. Maybe it is too much, I've been thinking about dropping the saturation a tad, but I don't know. Also, I know that I can post up to 800 pixel images however even with jpg compression down to 6 at 800 pixels the file was over the KB limit. Dropping the long edge to 500 pixels got me under the KB limit. I don't particularly like PS's "save for web option" as it tends to kill my images. It may just be that I don't know how to use the save for web option but who knows. I spend more time shooting than I do in PS and I'm a self taught shooter and self taught PS user. Need to spend time doing more of both obviously. Anyways, thanks for the advice all, greatly appreciated, I'll be sure to post up another one sometime soon, I really feel like I can grow as a wildlife shooter here.

[Dave Phillips]

Hi Paul, and welcome from me too.
I played with your original in curves only, setting white point at 245 and black point at 20 and then
applied a standard "S" curve for some contrast. I did do a small cyan desaturation for the CA down the neck also.
The egrets are hard subjects in bright light.....try egrets again on an overcast day and it will be much easier starting point.
BTW, your image now is only 68kb, so you should not have any problem with a larger size.

It will all come together.....keep 'em coming

[Paul Ricciardi]

Thanks dave that really helped.
Few questions, on the Cyan desaturation did you just go to the cyan saturation channel and lower the saturation or did you go to the channel, eye dropper the neck, and then lower it? I used the second method when I did my repost just wondering what you did.

As to quality of light, this was from a fairly overcast day and shot at about 715 am however this particular shot was when the sun was peeking through the clouds-the light was certainly not harsh . It may just be the lens, I've noticed pretty significant chromatic aberration wide open in high contrast settings (white bird on dark background) however the lens is SMC and in pretty good condition. With that said, it's an old lens, old coating, old lens design, and it's all being stuck on a digital body. However with that said I've used an OM 300mm lens on the same camera body with no CA and my other shots with the 500mm were all pretty free of CA/colour casts. I may have just messed up my exposure.

Anyways that really helped seeing what someone else did with it, I love shooting the egrets and plan on doing a lot more of it.