Green Heron banking

Canon 7D2, 400mm f4 DO IS II, 1.4x TC III
ISO 640, f5.6, 1/2500s, HH

You are killing me with these excellent Green Heron flight images. Are they all of the same (cooperative) bird? Bummer on the damaged fourth primary. I love the sharpness and like the square crop here. Along with the great pose. If it were mine, all of the black specks in the water would be gone.

with love, artie

Hi Artie and thanks for the comment. Green Herons both adult and juveniles have been using a downed tree at my neighborhood lake as a home base to rest after their fishing excursions. I’ve been sitting on the boat dock which is just in range of the tree waiting for the herons to fly in. A group of four juveniles seem to have been raised at the base of the tree this year. I posted a thread on this in the Story Sequences forum if anyone is interested. Looks like this action is about to wrap up for this season but it was nice while it lasted.
Allen

Sweet flight frame. Love everything here. Nice pose and sweet light.

Nice in flight shot of this species. They are super easy to see but getting them in flight is not easy. In my area they are almost always on some little pond in the woods and I can't remember an opportunity to get them in the open like this. On the 5k imac the shot seems like it has a yellow film over it, also the water and the bird look noisy and the color of the water seems off. I did the following, adjusted levels, eliminated the yellow film, ran noise reduction on the bird and background, ran some detail extactor at 25% on the bird and also smart sharpened the bird at .3 and 65 to counteract a bit of the NR applied to these tiny files. All global adjustments and did not bother trying to get everything perfect, just to reduce the noise, bring out some details and remove the filmy look to the shot. Here is a before and after.

Great IF gran Allen! I've never managed a decent flight shot of this species. There is a yellow cast on the image, but I'm not sure I'd push it as far blue as Isaac's rendering. Crop works well here as well.

Thanks for the comments everyone and for the repost Isaac.
Isaac, I did my own redo and came up with this. I think it is more true to what I saw that morning. Thank you for the suggestion and working up a repost.

Although the flight pose is terrific for a difficult IF bird; I'm just not a fan of the overall image bc imho it lacks IQ... What I continue to see is an image that lacks details and is noisy. There is no shine on the feathers, and all the colors look flat... With an ISO of 400 and 1/2500 there had to be sun and that would make those gorgeous green feathers shine, and even lend a slight iridescence on some of the feathers... Was this a big crop? I think Isaacs repost has more brightness overall which I prefer but it still isn't able to deliver the image quality that is lacking. Again, gorgeous flight pose Allen. Thanks

I think your repost is a step in the right direction but the bird still does not look tack sharp, there is still a yellow film on the shot which means the levels are off and it still noisy on my 5k imac. I have to agree with Ann on this one. Great pose but the image quality just is lacking unfortunately on the large screen.

In retrospect, I must say that to my eyes, Isaac's repost rocks.

with love, artie

I like the photo with a nice post. But I have to agree with Ann, there's a lack if image quality on the bird and it does seems noisy aswell. Isaac repost is better but it shows a slight blue/purple cast on my monitor.

I like the dorsal view a lot, tough to make a good shot of these guys but you did it here. excellent wing position and attractive BG too, you got it all covered. the green heron looks somewhere between the image posted in pane 1 and 7. the plumage does have some natural yellowish tint thus the name green and is not perfectly blue. I do see some color noise in the plumage, it should be easy to remove

TFS