Great Blue Heron Portrait

[Raymond Lee]

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Hermitage Park, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. September 30, 2011. Evening lighting from the right-rear side.
Canon EOS 7D | EF 400mm f/5.6L | Manual mode, 1/800 sec., f/7.1, ISO 800, handheld.

Thanks for all C&C! Have a great weekend (long weekend to some)!

Raymond

[Randy Stout]

Ray:

The side lighting has given tremendous texture and detail to the feathers, love the lower portion of the neck in particular. Interesting head position.

The bright and busy background is a bit distracting, in particular the grass intersecting with his bill. I would consider trying to tone it down a bit.

Cheers

Randy

[Raymond Lee]

Randy, thanks for the suggestion! Tone it down as in lower the overall brightness of the background? I tried lower the brightness a bit , but the highlights appear to stand out even more even though they were toned down together with the non-highlights in the background.

Raymond

[Raymond Lee]

Here's the revised version of the above shot:

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For the background, I lowered the saturation slightly, re-adjusted the curve, and applied Gaussian blur.

[Arthur Morris]

As you have figured out by now, off angled light presents lots of problems especially with birds with some white plumage.... As Randy says, parts of the image like the neck are nice..... But. The biggest reed problem is the one that lines up with the bill. That is an easy fix....

[Randy Stout]

Ray:

Sorry to be so slow getting back. Busy day.

When I said tone down the background, I wanted to lower the overall luminosity, and specifically to try and reduce the brightness of some of the highlights in the background.

I created a luminosity layer of the the image, changed the blend mode to multiply( which darkens the highlights) and then put a black layer mask over the image. I used a white brush to paint in the multiply layer effect only on the background. This isn't perfect by any means in this busy of a background, but to my eye it does help separate the bird a bid from the background.

Artie: Could you share your preferred method of removing the reed touching the bill? I tried a couple, but not completely satisfied.

Cheers

Randy

[Raymond Lee]

Randy, Artie:

It is not a easy one with processing this shot with the off angle lighting and busy background. It is what it is though and it was the only scenario I can shoot at that time. I appreciate your suggestions

How about this one:

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I toned down the background a bit more with a Curve layer. I also edited out that grass that intersects the bill with several series of layer masks and with combination of cloning and healing. It looks much better to me now. What do you guys think?

Thanks,
Raymond

[Randy Stout]

Ray:

Good job on the reed near the bill.

I think you have gotten as much as you can out of this image. It is a challenge because of the feather detail, making selections on the bird are a challenge!

A point to carry forward to next time. When you know you have a busy background, go for the shallowest DOF you can to isolate the subject as much as possible. In this case, shoot wide open.

Cheers

Randy

[Arthur Morris]

Randy, Artie: It is not an easy one with processing this shot with the off angle lighting and busy background. It is what it is though and it was the only scenario I can shoot at that time. I appreciate your suggestions

How about this one; I toned down the background a bit more with a Curve layer. I also edited out that grass that intersects the bill with several series of layer masks and with combination of cloning and healing. It looks much better to me now. What do you guys think? Thanks, Raymond

I am with Randy; the repost is about as good as you are gonna get. As far as this: "It is not an easy one with processing this shot with the off angle lighting and busy background" both Randy and I have been there often :). And that is why I teach folks to point there shadows at the birds whenever possible :e3.

[Raymond Lee]

Really appreciate both of your help!

Thanks,
Raymond

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Ray, YAW; that's what we are here for. And we learn a ton from you guys as well.