Great Blue Heron in Field

20D, 400DO + 1.4xTCII, f5.6, 1/500s, ISO 800, Eval Mtr, tripod mount.
Steve

That is marvelous he even looks cold. Tremendous!

I really like this shot, love the composition, leaving space for the virtual feet, love the blowing feathers of her/his neck, the BG looks just great and the colors are wonderfull I just find the left lower corner of the frame a bit distracting. Congratulations!

Beautiful. Sharpness, mood, everything. The dead grass is a little light and draws a lot of attention. Maybe you could burn it a little.

Great setting and it shows how cold it must have been. I like the details and soft light.

Oh man this one is really sweet.The nice colors of the BG, teh sharpness and the soft light put this image over the top. I love it!

really a very nice image! well done.

There are big problems(edit: sorry they are not really big problems, but small problems that I exagerated and called big problems ) with this image that haven't been mentioned, and I've noticed most of the commenting members, who are far better photographers than I, aren't mentioning them. First of all , the detail of the feathers and exposure is excellent, as well as the harmony of the colors. However, there is a major merge between the front of the bird and the background. (This is where the the foreground and background can't be separated visually) There is a sharpening halo around the legs, and I think that sharpening the foreground grass has caused it to look odd. I think that the the bird should have been sharpened selectively, and not anything else. The merge? I'm not sure what can be done. With the wind blowing it would be hard to tell in the viewfinder. Maybe images taken before or after were better in this aspect. Sometimes I think I need to add a disclaimer to my posts, but it would be too long. It would start with I may or may not know what I am talking about, this is only an opinion, blah, blah,blah. That said, Steve: Overall a good Job.

Thanks everyone for the comments.
William,
I didn't really notice the merge until you mentioned it. Some of it is due to NR and web resizing. The long white chest feathers were blowing in the wind and sometimes merged with the rising, light strands of grass in the BG. I only applied a couple of generic sharpen passes when I downsized for the web. NR/blur was applied to the everything but the bird. I tend to post pics I quickly process to see how they turned out. I need to post only the ones I spend time on preparing for print.

Steve: I appreciate your responding to my post. Thanks for the background information. Sometimes after I post a critique, and I read it, it sounds sort of condescending, or something, and the tone it not what I intended. Need to work on it. I post pictures quickly as well, and problems don't become apparent until I view them here. They do lose a lot of detail when downsizing, and I need USM to make up for it.. As a matter of fact, I have a number of images that need no sharpening at all (at least when I look at them full size on my monitor) until I downsize them for the web. As for printing...I too am much more interested in how it would look when printed. regards~Bill