Another Great Egret with Green Lore

[Tom Walter]

I like the sharpness and the green lore but still have vegetation in the foreground. It's interesting to note that the egrets often stand on one leg.

Nikon D200<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
Nikon 70-200mm f2.8
1/1500 sec
200mm at f11
ISO 400<o:p></o:p>
hand held<o:p></o:p>

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Tom,
Looks like you have a few hotspots as presented. Looking at the specs....you should have been OK.....so you may have introduced it in PP'ing. I'm not the biggest fan of the vegetation....mostly the OOF LL. I do realize that we aren't as fortunate as the Floridians and often get these type of situations where we are.....so nothing you can do about that! I think you should try to rework this one and see if you can get more detail in the whites.

[Daniel Cadieux]

A different setting for this species for sure. Not crazy about the LL OOF vegetation, but I do like the dried reeds. Light looks like it might have been getting harsh and this is where it got hard to get the whites in check...doesn't look too bad from my end, but there are some clipped highlights that should be easy to tame. I'm seeing some flecks throughout the BG (especially noticeable around the head, and most of the UL corner) - are they post-processing artefacts?.

Looking at the techs I think you could have opened up more to get the water smoother in the BG.

[Tom Walter]

Daniel and Roman,

As I look back I see that I did blow out the highlights a little bit in Photoshop. I have to be extra careful with the whites. My bigest problem with this image was the background, in particular the reflections in the water. The lake is surrounded by houses and reflections are a problem if the water is relatively calm. I have attached my cropped original (with the whites corrected) to show the reflection problem. I used a combination of the clone stamp and the healing brush to reduce the effects of the reflections. Perhaps you have some suggestions at to how I might have done a better job.

Tom

[Daniel Cadieux]

Tom, looking at your original I must say you did a good job removing the reeds in front of the egret. I see what you mean about the BG, but that is another good reason to open up the aperture in this case. Those lines from those houses also give a clue that the image needs CW rotation: