Great Blue Heron

At Circle B Bar Reserve this morning I was capturing head shots of a juvenile Great Blue Heron when a dragonfly flew too close. I wish the head was turned slightly more towards me but I couldn't move any more right, so I had to capture what was given. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 400mm (600mm FFE)
1/2500 F/5.6 Matrix Metering 0 EV ISO 450
Post processed in Lightroom 6 and Photoshop Elements 10
Cropped for composition

Joe:

Fun! Don't think I have seen a GBH with a dragonfly before. Nice colors in bg, well exposed. Agree with self critique re: head angle, but his concentration on the butterfly is strong enough that its not a major issue for me.

Cheers

Randy

Wonderful! A great catch for you both! Every shot can't have the "perfect" head angle! This one works fine for me.

Maybe a tad on the bright side??

Hi Joseph, the Heron isn't going to get fat on that morsel. :S3:

I think it needed more DoF, as these birds don't move quickly, I feel you could have afforded to crank up the ISO, gained more DoF and 'perhaps' a fraction less SS. If this is almost FF and not a big crop I would try to get a bit more detail & definition from the bill, primarily the lower half. May be a bit more sharpening too. HA is not ideal, slightly angled away as you said, but full appreciate the restraints you had.

TFS
Steve

nice image,dragonfly a bonus,dont mind the head angle,as Randy said,the consentration in the birds eye,makes up for the head angle.

Nice portrait, with the dragonfly in the beak, Joe. I would have never guessed that they capture little creatures as well.

Thanks everyone for your viewing, commenting and offer suggestions for improvement.

Steve, I checked the focus point and depth of field this morning. The active focus point was on the eye, the depth of field was 5 cm or 1.97 inches, enough for the slender head and dragonfly. The image as shown is almost full frame, I just took a little off the left and top to place the bird for composition. I worked more on the image this morning. I believe the repost here is better and addresses the improvements you mentioned.

Hi Joe, looks a bit saturated now to me, I prefer the OP I think, if you pull the green back a bit in Saturation it may offer a softer backdrop and not so competing with the subject, just a thought???? Re DoF, all I was thinking of was, with the beak angled away slightly, is 2 inches enough? :S3:

Hi Joe
I think the OP works best but with a simple drop in gamma all around.- or selective burning or darkening. Interesting shot whatever.
John

Hi Joseph, great portrait of this Heron, and love the concentrated stare of the Heron on his catch. I like your additional sharpening on the Heron, but would have left the BG as is.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions to improve the image. I went back to the original and worked it up from the beginning keeping your suggestions in mind to implement. I believe this image incorporates all of your suggestions and improvements. Thanks again everyone.