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If it were mine, I'd work it up-it might not be a first choice based upon other images you've shown from that day, but still a worthy image none the less. While it would be a cleaner bg without them, the gulls aren't a major distraction for me. Removing the other Heron and the 3 whitish blobs ahead of and just under the bill and neck would do the trick. Color Balance is a matter of taste- remove all of the early morning cast and the warmth of the image goes with it. Crop is a suggestion to draw viewer attention to the bird.
Edit: Another viable alternative would be to leave the crop as is and replace most of the gulls with sky, I feel that would a strong environment image even with the oof Heron.
Last edited by Randall Farhy; 11-09-2012 at 11:08 AM.
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My $0.02 .
The heron is sharply photoed ...Use it ,some how !
The warm cast tells me some of the story , so I wouldn't try to remove it ,It's natural an we reconize it . I would however remove the second GBH as well as the three white small spots around the subject's head /neck . The crop will be a hard call for me ,becaust I want to be able to see what the heron is looking at . that would require more to the left ,at the same time i would remove some from the top . the gulls in the BG are not an issue with me ,though I might blur them just a tad more .
Just one more opinion ,your milage will very !
Edit ,sorry "spell check " is out to day . :((-
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Thank you Randall and Clyde for your opinions and suggestions. I like the idea of minimizing the background heron. Randall's crop showed me some possibilities. Thank you both!
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Hi Jeannean - beautiful sharp image and I like the pose and the warm light. If it were mine, I'd clone the OOF heron out.
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Hi Jeannean.
The context of an image has a lot to do with the decision to remove a color cast, or not. If there are obvious signs in the image that it is taken at sunrise, such as elongated
shadows or other visual cues, I would say keep the "golden glow". If there are no cues, I'd default to the true colors of the subject. I don't think a yellowish cast, in itself, tells the viewer it is at sunrise (or sunset). Especially if they don't know what color the bird is supposed to be. In this case its best to do white balance and color cast adjustments in ACR.
As a matter of fact, do as many adjustments as possible in ACR. Don't overlook the spot removal tool (which can also remove more than spots) and the adjustment brush, which also is great at brightening up eyes.
About cropping; cropping for composition is OK. Cropping to make up for a subject being too small in the frame (insufficient focal length) is not. Excessive cropping reduces image quality drastically.
The main lesson, as I'm sure you realize, is to be a little more observant about whats in the background (or foreground) when capturing the image. Being careful at the moment of capture and avoiding technical errors, of which I would include busy backgrounds, will save a great deal of time in post-processing. Shooting it right in the first place means post-processing will rarely take more than a minute or two.
As far as whether it is a good idea to spend more than a few minutes in post depends a great deal on the subject. Is it likely you will have many opportunities to shoot great blue herons in the future? I live close to the Texas coast too, and there are plenty of them, so I would simply be more aware of potential problems the next time out. Lets say it was a bar-tailed godwit that landed in front of you? Pretty rare in these parts, and you are unlikely to see many, if any, in the future. So if you ended up with stuff in the background it would be worth spending more time in post-processing, and it is useful to know how. Therefore I would go ahead and work on the GBH with the busy background. Practice.
With this image it would be pretty easy, especially with photoshop CS5 or CS6 and the wonderful additions of content aware fills and brushes. The
content aware fill brush can quickly remove those light colored circles, and removal of the heron in the background can be accomplished in short order using the polygonal lasso
tool (or other selection tools) and content aware fills. Admittedly, these sometimes aren't perfect and you might have to touch up with the clone stamp tool, but it shouldn't take a great
deal of time. Learning to use these tools is important. regards~Bill
Last edited by WIlliam Maroldo; 11-10-2012 at 10:34 PM.
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Thanks all. I do have many opportunities to photograph these birds, so will do so with fewer birds around. 
