Great Blue Heron in flight with nesting material

[Dennis Zaebst]

Taken Tuesday at the Venice Rookery. The male was making regular forays for nesting material, and this image was one of the better ones.

Canon 7D, ISO 800; AV mode, evaluative metering; 0 EV EC.; EF 70-200 mm f/4L IS + EF 1.4X TC @ 280 mm; 1/1600 sec. @ f/6.3. HH. PP in LR 4.3...darkened the BG reeds a little. Almost full frame, cropped a little off the left and bottom for composition.

Looking forward to your thoughts and critiques. Thanks!

[Nick Palmieri]

Great in flight capture and the nesting material is a nice bonus. I am thinking the grasses in the BG could be toned down a bit more. Either way congrats on a nice capture.

[PhilCook]

Nicely timed Dennis and sharp details as well, lovely wing form, that's quite a branch he's carrying, I'd be inclined to run a bit of noise reduction on the background just to smooth out some of the graininess in the reeds

[Marina Scarr]

Lovely pose but the BG is too distracting for my taste and the bird's head doesn't look sharp to me. Love the nesting material.

[Richard Stern]

Hi,

The bird and the branch look good to me, and the angle of the bird slightly in your direction is good. But I also find the bg a bit powerful and distracting. ? selectively blur it a bit.

Richard

[Dennis Zaebst]

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to get distracted into that philosophy again...blurring the BG. I've tried that, even bought a plug-in which promised to do that effortlessly.... and it just didn't work. It (the BG) is what it is...that is what was there. I can't do anything about the blurry head either. I'll just delete it. Thanks everyone.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Dennis I think you have a fine capture there, I have a couple of thoughts:
Suggest run NR over all the image say DeNoise on Medium then run some more at a slightly higher setting on the background.
Apply a little more sharpening I find Philip Perold techniques so convenient, I have modified several different versions for 600, 800, 1024 and 1400px sizes.