The Sky Pointer

[Arno Ellmer]

Image created at the Lonehill Bird Sanctuary near my home.
A Grey Heron "sky pointing" during courtship display.
I quite liked the unusual posture of the bird.

Canon Mk IV
400mm f5.6
1/4000
f/7.1
ISO 800
EC + 1/3
Hand held

[Joe Senzatimore]

Nice pose indeed. The pano fornat works well on this. Seems a bit hot in the whites.

[Shawn Zierman]

Perfect light angle. Artistic crop, though I prefer the more standard 3:2 ratio.
Love the behavior. Exposure looks pretty good to me, though the whites on the
cheeks of the bird are certainly looking quite white.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Arno, perfect choice of comp for this skyward pose. Lovely red eye, overall sharp, and I like the hint of perch at the bottom.

I popped round there during the day a little while back to recce the location. Seems like I will have to bring my camera next time.

[Arthur Morris]

Loverly bird, pose, and crop. The WHITEs look very bright. Would love to see this 800 pixels high.

[Arno Ellmer]

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions.
Artie , thank you for pointing out the image size.
I have toned down the whites and resized the image to 800 px high.
Hope this is an improvement.

[Arno Ellmer]

Loverly bird, pose, and crop. The WHITEs look very bright. Would love to see this 800 pixels high.

Thank you for your comments ,Artie. Have reworked the image and re-posted. Hopefully there is an improvement.

Regards,
Arno

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

repost is an improvement on a very nice behavior shot.

[Arthur Morris]

Repost is better and bigger but I believe that you had lots more pixels to use; try optimizing the JPEG to less than 245kb when you create it. The WHITEs show no RGB #s > 230 but still lack detail. I ran a 75% NIK Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor layer on the bright part of the neck and believe that it was a big help.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the composition, pose and sharpness. Arthurs repost is an improvement. Well done Arno.

[Arno Ellmer]

Repost is better and bigger but I believe that you had lots more pixels to use; try optimizing the JPEG to less than 245kb when you create it. The WHITEs show no RGB #s > 230 but still lack detail. I ran a 75% NIK Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor layer on the bright part of the neck and believe that it was a big help.

Thanks sincerely ,Artie , this is certainly one step better! Much appreciated.